


Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance.

by bighonkymommymilkers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Autism Coded Reader, BB-8 Being a Little Shit (Star Wars), BB-8 Ships It (Star Wars), Bad Decisions, Bad Jokes, Bad Writing, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Dissociation, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, I'm Bad At Summaries, Matchmaker BB-8 (Star Wars), Mental Health Issues, Miscommunication, My First Work in This Fandom, No Sex, No Smut, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Other, Panic Attacks, Planet D'Qar (Star Wars), Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Poe Dameron Is A Mess, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Humor, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Space Mom Leia Organa, Strangers to Lovers, Wingman BB-8 (Star Wars), no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28780101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bighonkymommymilkers/pseuds/bighonkymommymilkers
Summary: NO USE OF Y/N.SOULMATE AU: FIRST WORDS YOUR SOULMATE SAYS ARE WRITTEN ON YOUR WRIST.You always knew you were going to join the Resistance ever since you woke up on your thirteenth birthday with "Poe Dameron. Best Pilot in the Resistance." inked on your wrist. But no division on D'Qar wants you, you're completely out of your element, and your first meeting with your soulmate is a disaster because of the eensy-teensy-little fact that he doesn't know you're his soulmate (which is mainly your fault, because you didn't say anything to him). Cue a meddlesome BB-8 and multiple occasions of avoiding your problems instead of handling them like a functioning adult. It's fine. You're fine. You'll just hold Poe Dameron at an arm's length for the rest of your pitiful existence while stuck in a perpetual state of pining. (Hint: You're not fine with it. Not at all.)
Relationships: BB-8 & Poe Dameron, BB-8 & You, BB-8/Reader, BB-8/You, Poe Dameron/Original Character(s), Poe Dameron/Reader, Poe Dameron/You
Comments: 53
Kudos: 82





	1. An Unfortunate Start

**Author's Note:**

> You meet the man you've been waiting for your entire life. 
> 
> Spoilers: It doesn't go quite as you imagined.
> 
> Chapter warnings: Sexual humor, profanity, descriptions of panic attacks, references to dissociation/depersonalization, the reader is a self deprecating bitch

Normally, whenever someone goes by the moniker _Best_ [insert profession] _in_ [insert place] _,_ they’re probably a narcissistic fucking asshole. It's just a general rule. You have to be a real piece of bantha shit if you’re gonna put yourself on _that_ high of a pedestal. 

The one exception to this rule is if you really are just _that_ fucking good at your job, but that was an outlier. 

Despite all the millions of souls in the galaxy, it was still mostly improbable. _Mostly_.

Poe Dameron was that fucking outlier. That man just had to be that ridiculously good at everything, from his effortless flying to looking like sex on a cracker. This wasn’t said in animosity. No, you didn’t hate _him_. You just hated his effortless perfection. 

(And most of all, you hated when that you didn't see that perfection reflected in yourself.)

It wasn’t a petty crush. Okay, _yes,_ it was. But it was a petty crush seated on top of a much deeper underlying connection. An objectively _very_ important connection.

You’d think the Universe would try to pair soulmates together that actually. . . _f_ _it._ It was like the Universe had just said, _fuck it,_ with your soulmate assignment and threw a dart at a spinning wheel and poor unfortunate Poe Dameron had gotten lumped with you because Hot Porn Star from Corellia had been just short of one spin. There was probably a betting pool with all the other super cosmic deities, and a bunch of them had lost millions in credits because how was it possible that fucking _Poe Dameron,_ best pilot of the Resistance, was _your_ soulmate? You weren’t a nobody exactly. . . more of a "floater." You’d been stuck in an existential crisis since you reached adolescence, which would have been a “normal part of childhood psychological development” if you had actually _outgrew_ it. You never really felt tethered to reality, identity, relationships, gender, hell _anything_. Anyways, that was _before_ you got your soulmate mark. (Not to say that the appearance of your soulmark had just magicked away all your woes and various mental illnesses stacked atop each other like a precariously played game of Jenga.) You remember waking up to the mark on your thirteenth birthday, wide eyed and pumped up like someone had given you a shot of adrenaline while you were sleeping, eyes fervently tracing the newly inked words on your wrist: 

_Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance._

You can distinctly recount cataloging every curve and line of the phrase, mesmerized by the delicate but bold swoop of the words and the way that it just felt so _right_. You gave a soft sort of smile at your newly inked wrist, which you cradled in your other hand, bathed in the artificial fluorescent light of your bedroom. It was the kind of smile reserved for lazy mornings and nights where the stars shined _just_ right and you finally thought, yeah, maybe I’m alright for once. The kind of smile where your cheeks burn just a little from exertion and it feels greeting an old friend, or the warm heat of a fireplace that you feel in your bones. The kind of warm that warms you down to your toes and sends a friendly, thrilled tingle down your spine. 

You were _unnaturally_ lucky from the start (in terms of soulmates at least). The soulmate mark was a special thing, the first phrase or word that your soulmate said directly to you, uninterrupted. Some lucky bastards got full on paragraphs, large swirling blots of ink that sometimes entwined around their wrist like a curling vine, while other poor sods were stuck with one letters _hello’s_ and _sorry’s._ You were probably the luckiest bastard of the lot, having a full _name_ written, as well as a political movement they were tied to _and_ a profession. (Well, the Resistance didn’t really become that big of a deal until your late adolescence, so the underground movement puzzled you and your parents for quite some time before eventually making sense. Keep in mind, the Rebellion used to be the big fish in the metaphor sea of the galaxy when it came to eating fascism.) You didn’t have to worry about always keeping an ear out for that _hey!_ that just might be the one. It was simple. Easy. 

At least, it should have been.

You grew up on a planet that just teased the edge of the[ Unknown Regions](http://www.swgalaxymap.com/), basically edging space — or rimming, because it was at the edge of the Outer Rim, get it? — with how much it was _so_ close but just not enough. It was the outermost outer part of the Outer Rim, the no-man’s-land of the galaxy, a place no one went unless they were fucking insane or were hiding from something (or someone). The planet was an icy tundra shit fest, a snow desert with nothing but sloping dunes of the Universe’s crystalized cum for miles around. It was so fucking cold that everything on the planet had to be in tunnels beneath the snow to combat the high winds, so you spent most of your early life and adolescence living like a little snow hermit with the ever impending fear that your house would fucking _collapse_ due to heavy snowfall above ground. One time, the ventilation tubes collapsed as well, and you had been trapped underground with the air supply rapidly deteriorating with every cold inhale and exhale of your foggy breath. Your parents had been ice fishing and you were left alone for hours in the steadily collapsing snow drift of what used to be the living room before they unburied you. The whole time you lay there, face flat in the fucking snow, small body nearly crushed due to the sheer weight of the snow atop you, you thought about Poe. You thought that dying due to suffocation or the snow finally folding like a house of cards above was even more fucked up considering you'd never even had the chance to meet your soulmate. It would be pretty asshole move for the Universe to put two people together just for one of them to get ripped away from the other. You were so overwhelmed — by, y’know, the snow drift and air supply diminishing and the thoughts of impending doom and a lonely, sad future for Poe Dameron — that it triggered your first panic attack. Which was _additionally_ shitty because you started crying and hyperventilating, which wasn’t good when the temperatures were frigid enough that your tears solidified on your face and you didn’t have a stable air supply to waste with hyperventilating. When your parents dug you out, you were hypothermic and literally couldn't feel your limbs. If you had balls, you’re sure there would've been a whole new meaning given to blue balls before they. . .fell off or something. 

Anyways, childhood trauma aside, you always knew that the shitty icy tundra you grew up on would simply be that: the shitty icy tundra you grew up on. You weren’t going to make a home there, certainly weren’t going to find _Poe Dameron_ there, and you weren’t going to continue living with your impending death hanging over your head. (Which in hindsight was ironic, because you ended up joining the Resistance.)

When you got off the transport ship, gaping like the fish your parents would catch from the ice, you found yourself on Naboo. Dressed in an overly heavy coat lined with tauntaun fur in the slighty muggy Nabooan air, astonished at your ability to _see_ things without the ice biting your cheeks and the wind blinding you with the stinging of your eyes, the _sky_ . . .it was more or less a culture shock. You had quickly shed your many many many layers, draping your thick coat over your shoulder like a knapsack, and sat on the ground staring at the impossibly vibrant _green_ and _blue_ of Naboo like a complete idiot as passerbys glanced at you curiously. You had looked at your wrist, and gave a wide-tooth smile to the inked letters that probably looked pretty fucking creepy to any Nabooan passing by. Your soulmark was your compass, and now all you had to do was find the Resistance. 

So you did. Naboo was a hot spot for Resistance sympathizers so it wasn’t too hard to find some people who would spill a bit about recruitment if you slid some credits across the table. (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that smooth. You didn’t know really anything about the monetary system, having lived on Icy Shithole your entire life, so you had embarrassingly had to ask a vendor _hypothetically_ how much two credits would be worth if _hypothetically_ you didn’t understand how the credit system worked. To this day, you’re sure that bitch scammed you.) While you were perusing and schmoozing around, trying to find out how to join the Resistance, you had stumbled upon one of their recruitment posters. It was a gaudy thing — the hologram had such high graphics that you had tried to grab it like it was a physical poster only to embarrassingly fall against a wall — and made you wonder if _this_ was where all the New Republic funds funneled into. An attractive man with dark curls and kind brown eyes and gave a weirdly-intimate bedroom eyes smolder to the viewer, dressed in the iconic but also terribly ugly Resistance pilot uniform. (Sorry but _bright_ _orange? Really_? It’s so fucking recognizable. It’s almost like they _wanted_ to get easily spotted and then interrogated for the sake of like, dramatization of the plot. Fuckin’ rebels. Anyways.) But the graphics weren’t really what grabbed your attention, it was _what_ the poster said. The caption on the poster shook you to your core, and not in the orgasmic way that really _shook_ you to your _core_ but in the _holy shit holy shit holy shit_ kind of way _._ Because Mr. Smolder was in fact not Mr. Smolder but was _Poe Dameron. Best Pilot of the Resistance._ You were too shell-shocked to realize that you could possibly sue the Resistance for copyright infringement of your soulmark. You were not too shocked however to realize that the moniker was probably the dumbest fucking thing you heard. But it wasn’t, because it was your soulmate. Which was also the dumbest fucking thing you’re ever head. 

Seriously, _this guy? Your_ soulmate?Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome? You had already accepted that your soulmate would be a pilot, but you expected that the moniker of best pilot was more of a self-bestowed-ego-trip-esque thing and not a massive political and military movement actually _bestowing_ it upon him. Your brain had glitched for too long — your central processing unit was utterly fried — leading to you actually _greeting_ the poster like it was your actual soulmate and not a fucking holoimage. You had gotten about a word in before painfully wacked yourself on the head with the palm of your head and spent the next minute roughly chastising yourself for your idiocy.

If you couldn’t even articulate properly to a _hologram_ of your soulmate, how would you cope with the real thing? 

_Not well,_ you’d find out. 

You’d navigated to a recruitment center for the Resistance — thanks to the blasted poster — you were shuttled to the nearest base on D'Qar. There, you met with other Resistance recruits, all of them fresh-aced and bushy-tailed and already knowing _exactly_ what they were there for. (Every one of them unlike you.) They wanted to be pilots. They were flying academy graduates that had passed with flying (no pun intended) colors. They wanted to be spies, diplomats, strategists, fighter mechanics, droid specialists, communications officers, _everything_ and _anything._ They were so passionate, a raging fire of desperation fueled by having everything they loved ripped away from them by the Empire at too young of an age. 

You left your home planet on your own volition because you got tired of snow and eating frozen fish. You joined the Resistance because of a pretty poster with a caption that could have been just a horrible, crazy coincidence. You’d always been a floater, not really knowing your purpose, but now you actually _had_ a pseudo-purpose and _still_ felt like bantha dung. And they all were aware of just how starkly out of place you were. On your first day or so on D’Qar, one of the commanding officers in charge of the recruits had looked you in the eye with an intensity reserved for having really intimate sex or being yelled at and asked you why you joined the Resistance. You had reached in between your ass-cheeks, and dug around a bit until you pulled out the stinkiest, bullshit answer that the whole fucking galaxy had ever heard. You still remember the expression of the Resistance officer, staring at you with a sort of disgust like you had just shoved your discharge covered panties in front of her face, when you told her _it sounded fun._

(War wasn’t fun. Everyone fucking knew that. _You_ knew that. But you couldn’t tell your commanding officer that you came with the hope that you could possibly get dicked down by the guy on the poster who possibly-probably- _definitely_ was your soulmate.)

Those that didn’t know what job they aimed for at the Resistance, like you, were cycled to shadow under commanding officers of various areas. You were already at a disadvantage; while the other recruits had been attending flight school and taking internships under New Republic Senators, you had been holed up in Icy Hellhole in the middle of fucking nowhere space setting up ventilation tubes and pretending not to be drowning in the urge to kill yourself. You weren’t _stupid,_ but your education certainly hadn’t been as extensive or specialty specific. They cycled you through everything, and then everything _again_ on direct orders from fucking _General Organa._ To this day, you were still shocked that they had contacted the head of the Resistance to inform her of what a fuck up you were. 

You bombed the flight simulator by _literally_ bombing your fighter in an unfortunate mishap which almost _impressed_ the commanding officer of the recruit division by how you completely defied the odds of success by just fucking up that badly. Your espionage training went abhorrent as well, simply because when you lied you gave the same “obvious, wide eyed appearance of a loth-cat.” Loth-cats were cute, and lying made you uncomfortable, so fuck that commanding office. You told a pilot requesting a hangar position to fuck off when there were too many calls coming in during communications training. You failed _spectacularly_ in every possible way. Busted the hyperdrive of a Y-Wing. Set the kitchen on fire leading to an evacuation of all kitchen personnel — a Twi’lek cook still gives you a dirty look whenever you get your food. On a positive note, the droids liked you, or at least found kinship in your shared social ineptness, but the droid repair people had told you that you lacked the knowledge to help with repairs and it would consume too much precious time to teach you. Precious time which the Resistance — and the galaxy — did not have. Apparently galactic fascism doesn't work a nine to five job.

You ended up in the janitorial staff, after a month long period of constant surveillance under multiple officers and an executive command issued by General Organa. It would have been an honor to be the first human to ever be added to a division that wasn’t even supposed to have carbon based lifeforms working in it, except for the fact it was the _janitorial staff._ The only reason that you _hadn’t_ been sent to the nearest transport ship and promptly shot out of an air lock was because of your soulmark, which was an awkward ordeal in itself. Imagine telling General Organa, stone faced boss bitch of the Rebellion, that her best and favorite pilot was soulmates to. . . _you._ To this day, you don’t know if she pitied you or Poe. (Probably Poe — you wouldn't blame her.)

They gave you the assignment on “graduation day” so you were forced to stand awkwardly in line with the rest of recruits while being greeted and congratulated in person by the top members of the Resistance that were on base (with holograms for the ones off base) with the full knowledge that you were a complete failure. The people around you were future Captains, Majors, Commanders, Coronels: leaders of missions, squadrons, espionage — the ones who would _actually_ overthrow the First Order and get vengeance for the millions of lives across the galaxy that had been lost. You would be reporting to the hangar during everyone else’s lunch break for the rest of your time on base (and most likely 'til the ominous end of the war) to mop up fighter fuel.

Even impossibly worse, Poe Dameron was in the rank of officials greeting the recruits, who would soon advance to Lieutenant. Well, all the recruits except for you. You would just be a Janitor. (You’re pretty certain there’s no hierarchy of ranks in the janitorial staff. What, you wash some grease _really_ well and get promoted to Captain?) Soulmate meetings are supposed to be magical, right? You were supposed to feel electrified, like a buzz was under your skin, like the satisfying final piece of the puzzle clicking in. . .but Poe Dameron might as well have electrocuted you with a cattle prod. Commander Poe Dameron, Black Leader, best pilot of the Resistance, had looked at you with the same friendly brown eyes and charming smile that he had greeted every other recruit with and said: “Poe Dameron. Best pilot of the Resistance.”

You felt sick. Not like butterflies in your stomach, no, it felt like you had fucking Stormtroopers marching in your intestines. Your soulmark tingled in a way that felt borderline itchy and you resisted the urge of scratching it from underneath the sleeve of your shirt. Your hands clammed up, your throat felt like it was closing, and every breath was flickering like a candle in the wind inside your chest cavity. You knew a panic attack when it was coming, but as you locked eyes with your soulmate, you couldn’t seem to stop the onslaught of the attack. And like with every panic attack you’d had since the snow drift fell on top of you that one winter, you started bawling. 

Commander Dameron’s face morphed from shock into confusion, and then into concern, but you were gone before anyone could say anything. You had stormed out of the line of recruits, who all mirrored different fonts of the same expression, because you just needed to get _out out out out out get out of here get out get out._

Sitting in your standard issue bed, licking the salty tears from your face, pillow soaked, eyes heavy and tired, you laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. Then you started crying again.

Soulmate meetings were supposed to be magical. Soulmates were supposed to just instantly _know_ and then fly off in an X-Wing into the setting sun. What a fucking waste.


	2. Best Droid in the Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You meet BB-8. Who knew droids could have anger issues, huh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: profanity, non-graphic injury, minor breaking of the fourth wall, bad dialogue (it's a droid okay it's not exactly a two way conversation because in the SW universe you never get subtitles so you gotta fill in the blanks like a big boy in this too, alright?), more self ESTEEM ISSUESSSSSSS YAYYYY, themes of loneliness and isolation (I live in the U.S. I haven't gone to a restaurant since March)
> 
> Note: This is a really self indulgent fic where I'm just projecting all my emotional instability onto you, the reader. If that's a turn off, fine, but I'm not mentally stable or neurotypical and my OCs sure as hell aren't going to be. Can you tell I don't have any other healthy venting behaviors? Also thank you all for the kudos and shoutout to Maria Santiago for the comment that was very sweet <3

It was a week into being officially part of the janitorial staff at D’Qar when you met the famed astromech BB-8. It wasn’t rare for droids to approach you in your hangar, and it was a regular occurrence enough that you had one of the droids — a little utility astromech that had been modified to assist in cleaning services — stand guard around you while you were working just to ward off any droids who thought you were a mechanic. To be fair to the droids, the janitorial service had never had any non-programmed sentient beings work in the department before and the uniform they gave you was the same mousey-green jumpsuit paired with a —  _ you guessed it  _ —  _ bright orange  _ utility belt that the mechanics wore. The one key difference between you and the mechanics, beside the fact that you couldn’t rewire and fix things for shit, was that the mechanics were all eating in the mess hall during D’Qar’s lunch break while you scrubbed fuel leakage and moped in your loneliness.

Having the janitorial staff work during the rest of the base’s lunch period made sense, as all the crud accumulating in the hangar had to be cleaned up before the squadrons went on their routine flybys and surveillance of the base later in the afternoon, and this was the opportune time as the least number of people were present in the hangar at this time of day. Lucky for you, as the Resistance was considerate enough to make a standard lunch break time for most divisions so people could actually have inter-division relationships, pretty much everyone else on base had migrated to eat in the cafeteria. That meant all the mechanics and pilots were out of the way and y’know, actually socializing with other living beings and forming bonds of comradery to battle against the stress and emotional trauma caused by fighting in a war, so you and the janitor droids could do your damn job. 

Part of the reason for your assignment to the custodian staff was due to the fact that the droids simply liked you, which was a major plus considering all of your “colleagues” were droids. Which was  _ especially _ good because cleaning the hangar without assistance would be literally impossible. The first time you had entered the hangar, you had just stared at the sheer amount of space. Like yeah, obviously fighters are fucking huge but holy shit the hangar was  _ fucking huge.  _ This was a level of BDE you had  _ not  _ expected. The hangar was a pretty big fucking space to cover just on your own, so it was good to have colleagues that could do their jobs without tiring. Over time, you had worked out a sort of routine with the cleaning droids through lots of careful persuasion and diplomatic discussion ( _ Beep beep beep beep! No, I’m telling you it’s a good idea! Eeeeee-wrrrr. Hey, that is not workplace friendly language!)  _ so everyday while the rest of the Resistance base socialized and mingled like  _ normal people _ , you swept across the hangar followed by a terrifying hoard of high pitched whining and beeps like some sort of warrior goddess riding their trusty stallion into battle.

Your soulmate might be a squadron leader, but you and your fleet of droids could scrub General Hux’s pale ass face so fucking hard he’d turn as translucent as a malnourished baby bird or  _ even better _ , be so fucking _ white _ that you could wield him like a stiff, angry twink magnifying glass to blind the TIE fighters with the sheer glare of his whiteness. You were good. You were chill. You stank of disinfectant and ammonia and the leftover grease that had taken up residence in the fabric of your ugly ass jumpsuit but you had a fucking army of droids — albeit cleaning droids — on your side and  _ nothing  _ could throw off your game. 

(Your soulmate was so _so_ close and oh Universe you were so fucking _lonely_ and _horny_ and you just desperately craved human interaction because the droids just weren’t enough to fill that _empty void_ in your chest you’d had since childhood and at night you just lay there sinking in the fact that you probably blew your one chance at being _something_ to _someone_ because _maybe_ Poe Dameron could give you some sort of _purpose_ and maybe if someone _loved_ you then you’d actually understand what _love_ meant and what it meant to _be someone.)_

You were  _ fine _ .

(False information has been detected.)

At least you  _ were _ fine for a little while, finally making peace — ( _ no you didn’t) _ — with the fact that you would just be another blip on your soulmate’s radar. Another fish in the metaphorical sea of D’Qar residents. Just another recruit who couldn’t keep their shit together in front of a commanding officer. 

Then a little fucking orange and white  _ ball  _ rolled into your hangar and the tiniest shred of stability in your life got set on fire, called a slur, and then shot out into open space.

It was probably fate, or some bullshit soulmate-esque thing like that. Of  _ course  _ you were the only person in the hangar and of  _ course _ no droids were going to be  _ eating  _ in the cafeteria at lunch break and of  _ course  _ BB-8 had gotten damaged on what was supposed to be a routine flying practice and of  _ course  _ the officer had given you a mechanic’s uniform because they didn’t have anything else because  _ there weren’t any non-droids before in the janitorial staff  _ and of  _ course  _ you always had ten droids around you at once because you had to clean shit together ( _ and they were the only semblance of friends you had _ ) and of  _ course  _ the astromech would only  _ naturally  _ assume you were a mechanic. 

Oh, and the fucking cherry on top — D’Qar had been abnormally hot that day, and the mechanic suit was designed with long sleeves as a safety precaution so you had pushed up your sleeves and revealed that delicate sliver of skin on your wrist where your soulmark lay.

It was too many fucking coincidences to reasonably seem like an  _ actual _ coincidence. In fact, it seemed just like the Universe to make a soulmate assignment where the two soulmates in question existed in like, separate fucking  _ cosmic planes _ , and  _ then _ try to stick them together. It was like ramming two mismatched puzzle pieces together when one of the puzzle pieces was made out of beskar and the other was wood. It was like trying to slip your dick into a girl’s Tatooine desert of a pussy with no lube.

(To be fair, this was also the same Universe that had allowed a fascist, oppressive huge military power to spread death and destruction like genital herpes at a cantina. Life wasn’t meant fair, but  _ fuck,  _ did you want to whine.) 

Speaking of lubricant, the famed orange and white astromech slipped in a pile of slippery crud you  _ swore  _ you cleaned a moment ago (fuck you author this is actually a ridiculous set or circumstances) and then  _ soared  _ like a sentient cannonball 5 meters across the hangar. It should’ve been hilarious to see the renowned droid be sent spinning by some fuel leakage when the damn thing had evaded capture from the First Order  _ and  _ saved Poe Dameron from certain death multiple times. Key word: It  _ should _ have. 

It would’ve been fucking hilarious had the spherical bastard not weighed around  _ 40 fucking kilograms  _ and been sent flying with your foot in the droid’s immediate trajectory. There was a loud clang, something that suspiciously sounded like the  _ crunch _ of your fucking  _ foot _ , and then dead silence for a solid minute in which you and the astromech engaged in high stakes eye contact (which was really unfair considering the bastard didn’t need to blink). 

After the initial shock wore off, BB-8 was quick to shoulder off the impact — the two spheres of its body realigning themselves at a dizzying speed — but your stupid human body hadn’t evolved to realign  _ bones  _ so you were left sitting on the floor in a daze like you were stoned out of your mind on spice.

In an instant, BB-8 launched into a whirling string of beeps and whistles, barely giving your brain any time to compute the spiel of Binary into Basic. 

“Hey hey, buddy,” you said, pausing in soothing the orange astromech when a hot wave of  _ holy fuck my foot’s broken  _ washed over you. Grimacing slightly, you continued your reassurances. “‘S okay, it wasn’t your fault. I should’ve cleaned that spill up.”

BB-8 tilted its head towards you, letting out a hesitant series of beeps with a surprisingly authentic tone of confusion.

You laughed. “Sorry little man, I’m not a droid mechanic.” BB-8 meeped sadly, rocking on its spherical body as if shuffling its feet awkwardly. It was cute, and probably would’ve been cuter had your foot not felt like it was sat on by a mudhorn.

You reached out your wrist to pat the droid awkwardly on the head — exposing the skin of your _ inked _ wrist — letting out a painfully cringe-worthy “there, there.” 

Maybe something wasn’t clicking in your brain. Maybe there had been a mass, spontaneous death of brain cells in your head caused from smelling disinfectants and cleaning supplies every week day. Whatever it was didn’t matter; you shouldn’t have reached out _that_ hand. You _knew_ that this was Poe Dameron’s droid. Everyone on the base had a seriously bad case of hero worship (not that he didn’t deserve it. . . _fuck_ that’s the hero worship talking), so you’d have to be dumb not to. While you weren’t some great purveyor of knowledge, you weren’t _that_ dumb. In the spectrum of stupidity, you probably were ranked in the category of Moderate Dumbass. So _why-why-why_ did you reach out your wrist that was inked with _Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance._ like you were handing the droid a spare tool instead of your life’s biggest secret? A sly part of your brain would whisper because you _wanted_ him to find out. 

But you didn’t want him to find out. No, you did. No, you  _ didn’t  _ want  _ Commander _ Dameron (not Poe — Poe Dameron the  _ soulmate _ existed in an alternate reality and this universe’s  _ Commander _ Dameron was  _ leagues  _ above and would  _ definitely _ reject you) to find out. But you did. You really kinda-sorta- _ hell-fucking-yeah  _ did.

_ Fuck.  _

In the split second that it had taken you to initiate sequence _instant regret_ and contemplate the merits of finding a blaster to shoot yourself in the head with (just to add onto the pre-existing physical anguish from your possibly crushed foot) the BB unit had already analyzed the ink on your wrist and was now excitedly rolling around the hangar in a manner that made your head spin. It happened so quickly that you had to take a minute to center yourself — your brain lagged for so long you swore you saw the spinning circle of a loading screen imprinted on your retinas — before your mind processed the sounds of high-pitched chirps and squeals that were emitting from BB-8. _Then,_ it took _another_ minute for you to actually _comprehend_ what the astromech was saying.

“No, no, BB-8, you can’t tell him!” You shrieked, voice cracking like you were a prepubescent boy. One of the janitorial droids from across the room beeped aggressively at you and gestured at you with a sopping wet greasy rag, sending specks of muck flying out and splattering against your already dirty cheek.

Any semblance of success you felt at stopping the BB unit from racing over to the mess hall to spill the explosive secret onto the unsuspecting best pilot of the Resistance faded when the droid’s complete misconstruction of what you meant processed. BB-8 seemed to take this to mean  _ you  _ wanted to tell him  _ yourself _ and began to ramble on in a flurry of suggestions for your first words while racing around you in circles.

“BB-8, we’ve already met!” you finally cried out, causing the droid’s plans for a spectacular first meeting to come to a screeching halt. The astromech started protesting again, but you silenced the BB unit with a firm glance. “We met. He said the words,” you paused, and the BB-8 took this as an invitation to slowly roll towards you like you were a startled animal. You glanced away from the droid, staring at the open sky of the hangar while you desperately racked your brain for the right wording.

“Poe. . .he. . .uh. . .doesn’t know it’s me. I. . .I—I never said anything,” you finished sloppily, the words coming out sheepish. The situation was rather silly when said out loud, the words sitting on your tongue not doing justice to the way every inch of your body had tensed and your panic stricken brain had unsuccessfully tried to absorb every single moment until your systems overloaded and puttered out. But you had dug this Sarlacc pit yourself and you were going to die in it now. 

BB-8 took your silence to mean that it was its time to speak now, and proceeded to absolutely _grill_ the fuck out of you. The droid might as well have roasted you on a spit after sautéing you in the ashes of your shame, and then dragged your dead body through the mud before being shot with a pulse rifle. You didn’t even _know_ there were that many curse words in Binary. Some of them you couldn’t even _translate._ You didn’t know what _BEEEEP BOP EEP WHRR WHRR_ meant and you sure as hell didn’t want to know now. You desperately tried to placate the furious astromech, as its incessant beeping was aggravating the janitorial droids, but the droid had taken out a _taser_ when you tried to interrupt _._ Who the _fuck_ gives their droid a _taser_?  (You knew who, unfortunately.)

After its long rant, BB-8 had rolled extremely close to your face until you were nose to. . .not nose and had let out a series of beeps informing you that it was going to promptly tell Poe  _ exactly  _ what you had disclosed.

Crying is a natural response to stress. Crying is a healthy way to emotionally release whatever frustrations you felt and was a good way to take time and process stress. And you were  _ really _ fucking stressed _.  _ From being rejected by literally every Resistance division, to meeting your soulmate and ruining literally any semblance of a good first impression, to having said soulmate’s astromech give you the biggest verbal ass whooping you’d had since you were young. . . you were pretty booked in terms of emotional distress.

The noise that escaped you when the tears in your eyes finally boiled over could only be described as the last dying roar of a wampa. It was the kind of sound that makes you want to clamp your hand over your mouth and look around like  _ holy shit did anyone else hear that abhorrent sound I just made.  _ It was a full out sob — not the cute kind of silent cry bullshit that happens on HoloNet shows. An  _ I-seriously-can’t-handle-this-shit  _ kind of sob. BB-8 let out a few alarmed beeps which roughly translated to  _ ah-shit-unwarranted-emotional-response _ and the next thing you knew it was pressing a tissue into your hand. It would’ve been sweet had the astromech not been the  _ cause _ of your sudden onslaught crying fit. Nevertheless, you took the tissue with a muttered  _ thank you  _ and wiped your eyes roughly before facing the droid again.

“You can’t tell him. You can’t tell him I’m his soulmate,” you pleaded, voice embarrassingly rough from your post-cry snot. You made a face as you felt a mushy glob of snot slide down your throat. Ew. That was like eating a period blood clot. BB-8 stared at you for a few seconds — leading to another awkward stare-down between you and the droid — before the astromech conceded, letting out an aggravated meep reminiscent of a sigh and rolling back slightly so it wasn’t so in your face. Which was good, because crying made your eyes even more dry than usually and you were  _ just  _ about to lose that staring contest.

The droid beeped a few more times — albeit more hesitantly — and you laughed in that pitiful way where you’re still sad but not in-imminent-danger-of-crying sad. 

“Yeah, my foot still hurts. Thanks for that.”

_ Beep beep meep eep. _

“I told you before, it’s not your fault.”

_ OOO-wee woop boop bop. _

“I, uh, work in the hangar during lunch break on most days — excluding mission times — and I eat in the cafeteria at around 6-ish every morning. What’s it to you?”

The astromech looked at you in what you could guess was the droid equivalent of feigned innocence before rolling away quickly.


	3. Second Impressions Are Usually Better. Usually.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The deep seated hatred you have for BB-8 would be enough to power a star destroyer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: second hand embarrassment (seriously this miscommunication is strong in this one), bad dialogue, miscommunication, a murder of the fourth wall, dirty thoughts and sexual humor, foul language and threats of violence (in pseudo-jest though), Poe really needs a hug and allusions to trauma because war isn't fun (unlike what MC said in the first chapter)
> 
> Note: I listened to "Won't Bite" by Doja Cat ft. Smino while writing this because I am a like........very horny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaPAfzuL6L4. I couldn't tag this but the reader is AFAB. I'm AFAB myself and go by she/they and because this fic is purely self indulgent the reader is representative of my own gender identity. It's only briefly mentioned and I'm sorry if it makes anyone uncomfortable.

BB-8 was a _dirty_ little _cunt_. 

A sneaky, meddlesome little spherical _bastard_. 

A fucking _ball_ wasn’t supposed to be invested in your love life, but considering that the matter also involved its master’s — _no, not master’s_ — that sounded like a fucking kink. . .companion’s, maybe? — love life you really shouldn’t have been that shocked that the astromech had decided to double cross you. (So much for droids not being able to lie. You’d never trust those mechanical little bitches again.)

D-Qar’s gossip mill was always chugging along at full capacity. You put a bunch of sexually frustrated, hyped on adrenaline young adults together and before you knew it people were being bent over X-Wings and just rawed out in the open, which was an unfortunate occurrence your poor eyes had witnessed.

(Which may sound strange considering the presence of soulmates, but soulmate culture varied based on the planet you were from. Your mother was from Kijimi, another frigid planet similar to the one you grew up on, and your father was from Coruscant. People from less population dense planets were more partial to “saving” themselves for their soulmate, despite virginity being an arbitrary social construct, but those from higher populated planets genuinely had a _I’ll find them eventually, why not have some fun in the meantime?_ mindset. When your parents met, your mom had been pretty pissed about that. Your father always joked that she should be grateful that he was skilled in bed and that was when you usually clamped your hands over your eyes and yelled, _I’m not listening!_ )

Most of the gossip was petty stuff about who fucked who and who chipped their A-wing in a routine flyby, but during a war, it made sense to want to talk about literally anything but the _actual war._ Mostly, the gossip was a nice out when things got too stressful. Well, at least it was _supposed_ to serve as an out for the stress of D’Qar life, but this normally applied when the gossip wasn’t about _you._ Three days after what you dubbed the _BB Incident_ , you woke up like any other work day, shrugged on your jumpsuit, and walked over to the cafeteria for a quick bite before the lunch rush. 

It was fine. Normal. You _liked_ normal. To you, change always felt like someone pushed you down a flight of stairs or shoved you out of an airlock. A need for change was the thing that brought you to the Resistance and into the current shit storm that you liked to call your professional and social life. 

You hated change. You despised it. You told yourself again and again that you would resist change; they could grab you kicking and screaming to the next great unknown if that’s what it took. You would _rage._ You would fight whoever _dared_ disturb your peace.

“Hey, did you hear that _Poe Dameron’s soulmate_ is on D’Qar?” casually asked a female Zabrak cook while idly spooning the day’s syrupy fruity concoction onto your tray. 

(You’d always been a pussy bitch.)

“Ha, good for him,” you said in a choked voice, but she kept on going, seeming to take your answer as a _go ahead tell me more_ sign instead of the blatant _fuck no please kindly let me eject myself into open space_ it really was.

“I know right?” She leaned in conspiratorially, so close to you that you could see every intricate pattern etched on her yellow skin. Her head sanitary net made a rustling noise, and you could see the peaks of her horns making small tents in the thin fabric. “And _apparently_ he’s already met them. But they didn’t say anything! Silly right? _Ha!_ You think they’re playing hard to get?”

You laughed like someone had just pummeled the shit out of you and didn’t even bother dignifying her with a response when you turned and walked away. 

Oh, you were going to fucking _murder_ BB-8. 

_Technically,_ the astromech hadn’t directly disobeyed your plea, but you’d gladly separate its head from its stupid ass spherical body if you got your hands on droid. BB-8 was also keenly aware of this — taking to skirting out of the room whenever you entered its peripheral vision — but instead of deterring the astromech’s matchmaking attempts, your rage seemed to only fuel the bastard.

The next strike in your _fuck you I will literally tear you component by component_ book was just short of two days later. 

Go on, guess. 

No, seriously guess. 

Taking a sledgehammer to the fourth wall, place your bets:

What did BB-8 do? 

  1. told Poe’s friends, Rey and Finn, because BB-8 is a little shit
  2. tried to get Poe to meet you based on the work schedule you gave last chapter because BB-8 is a little shit 
  3. BB-8 did nothing, because BB-8 is in fact not a little shit



If you answered c, _you_ are the little shit. If you answered a, that would definitely be asshole-ish and now that the author is writing this they’re thinking, _oh fuck, I could have gone that direction too but I’m already fucking with canon enough._ If you answered b, _ding ding ding_ we have a winnnneeer!

You should’ve known to not tell BB-8 your schedule. It was suspicious as fuck, which was plainly obvious looking back on it, but something about the little orange and white droid just tugged at your heart strings and that animalistic part of your brain that saw cute things and wanted to squeeze the life out of them. 

Right now, you would _love_ to squeeze the life out of BB-8. Very violently.

You shouldn’t have _had_ to be crouching on the floor of the mess hall using a plastic meal tray to shield your face — but you were. It wasn’t something you ever wanted to do, but you hadn’t accounted for the fact that BB-8 was not _only_ a pussy bitch who couldn’t face the consequences of its actions but a tiny spherical devil as well. 

Poe Dameron was sitting just a few strides away from you, looking hotter than the double suns of Tatooine. That man had no goddamn business looking _that_ fine. His hair was deliciously swoopy in a _I just woke up like this_ way that made you want to bury his face in your tits like a feral Loth-cat and pull his hair until he came — _waaaaaait_ hold the fuck up brain that is a commanding officer. _But he’s my soulmate,_ a part of your brain whined, and it didn’t help that the general rule of the Resistance issued uniforms lowering sexual appeal to below sea level did most definitely _not_ apply to him. If you thought he was a fucking snack on the poster you saw on Naboo, the real thing was a full course buffet and you were _starving._

You were also crouching on the ground five feet away from him peering over your tray like a sexually deprived creep. (Which sadly wasn’t _like_ because that was what you _were._ ) The worst thing about being in this position was that now you were eye level with BB-8, who was perched by your soulmate’s feet like a damn watchdog. BB-8 looked at you in what you could only imagine as pure, unadulterated satisfaction, and rolled back in forth in a motion you could only describe as _come on,_ and then had the _audacity_ — the fucking _audacity_ — to take out a lighter for the most ~~adorable~~ enraging thumbs up of fucking _encouragement._ Were you being peer pressured by a _ball_? Was that what things had come to? 

You _might_ have mouthed some not so friendly choice words back. 

While you engaged in silent discourse with the astromech, Poe Dameron sat in nervous anticipation, though his exterior appearance still oozed the healthy amount of self confidence expected from Poe Dameron: best pilot in the Resistance.

During his childhood, Poe had been regaled with tales of soulmates since he was old enough to wonder what a soulmate even _was_. Kes and Shara Dameron had found each other in the throes of war and regarded soulmarks as something sacred — a saving grace in the darkness that was the battle against the Empire. Before he had even gotten his soulmark, Poe would stay up into the hours of the early morning with Shara, shooting his mother question after question about soulmates until dawn rose. At age eight, Shara died, and Kes gave him her silver ring, and told him that Shara had planned on giving it to Poe when he got his soulmark, so he could give the ring to his soulmate. 

By the time Poe had gotten his soulmark, Shara had been dead for five years. His thirteenth birthday was a bittersweet affair, as since he was young he always envisioned the morning of his thirteenth birthday spent laughing with Shara and Kes as he excitedly showed off his soulmark. But he kept his mother’s words close to his heart, and the ring in the chain around his neck even closer, and eagerly awaited the day he would meet his soulmate. Most people met their soulmate in their early twenties, but Poe was already in his mid thirties and still hadn’t met his yet. He was Poe Dameron: Black Leader, _best pilot in the Resistance._ He had won battles that defied the odds of success, taken down more TIE fighters than he could count, but the only one who welcomed him home at the end of the day was an empty bed. Poe _knew_ there were people who would miss him, that if he flew out and never came back there were those who would mourn, and bitterly, he knew that he would also be mourned as an asset that was lost. Another soldier taken in the good fight. 

But he craved that deeper connection with someone, _y’know_ ? The comfort of knowing that you had someone to come home to, someone who — by the Universe’s will — was _required_ to love you unconditionally. Someone to hold you through the nightmares, hold you through the days where you collapsed on the ground and didn’t move for hours because your ears kept ringing with the sound of the panicked cries of your pilot — your _friend_ — as they fell out of the sky in a haze of smoke and fire until the communications went. . .silent. Someone to whisper sweet nothings to you after you collapsed in your dorm after you were forced to deliver the news to that pilot’s soulmate and had to stare blank-faced into the face of a person you barely interacted with outside of stints at the cantina and after-battle parties — your face not giving a hint that you carried that same sting of grief in your heart — as you told them they would never see the one person in the world that made them feel complete. Someone to hold you when your eyes kept replaying screen frames of your X-Wing going _down-down-down_ and your hands ached with the phantom pain of gripping so tightly at the malfunctioning controls of your ship desperately trying to stop your fighter from crashing into the hard ground of some backwater planet that might be the last thing you saw. Someone to nurse you through the rage coursing through your veins at all the lives taken in this goddamn battle, at the fact that you were the only one ever seeming to be _doing_ something and all those commanding officers were just sitting on their asses watching as people died and did nothing but talk about action, _talk_ and never _do_ and —

So frankly put: he was _terrified._

When BB-8 had burst into his sleeping quarters three days ago chittering about his soulmate, he was stuck in a state of shock until the astromech had _literally_ put him in a state of shock by shocking him with a taser to snap him out of his mind. The whole _already-met-but-didn’t-tell-you_ was slightly off-putting and didn’t bode well for him, but like everything else he took the threads of his doubt and weaved them into a calm and confident shroud. He told nearly everyone he came across about his mystery soulmate, talked with every goddamn table in the cafeteria just to make sure the information spread. 

Once they heard he was actively searching for them, surely they’d see it as an invitation to meet?

But after two days. . .no one came forth. It _hurt_ — it hurt in a way that he’d never felt before, like his mystery soulmate had taken his heart in their hands and just _squeezed_ — but he was the face of the Resistance and like hell if he couldn’t shoulder the pain. Kes had always said he was unreasonably optimistic for all the shit he’d been through. His optimism paid off, because after the D’Qar gossip mill stint failed, BB-8 had told him it knew the _schedule_ of his soulmate. He had pestered the droid for details — when he had met them, if they were as perfect as he imagined — but the BB unit had stubbornly refused to divulge any information, citing a droid code of honor. Who knew droids had codes of honor? 

Speaking of BB-8, the orange astromech was beeping in a violent manner towards something over his shoulder. Twisting his head, Poe did a double take upon seeing the form on the ground just short of six feet away periodically peeking over their lunch tray to glance at him. Yeah, that was pretty fuckin’ weird, but he’d seen more than his fair share of weirdness. Shouldering off any initial bewilderment, Poe tried his best to plaster on a hopefully friendly and approachable smile before strutting towards the figure.

The figure, an attractive young mechanic with an oddly familiar face, peered cautiously at him as he approached while gradually lowering their pseudo-shield. 

“Hi! Poe Dameron.” he greeted, injecting extra enthusiasm into his response as he outstretched his non-soulmark hand towards them.

The person continued staring at him, slack jawed and eyes raking over him in a way that inadvertently caused his neck to flush. His smile wavered a little, and his hands awkwardly dropped to his side. Now closer to them, his mind finally finished sorting through his mental database of all the people stationed at D’Qar and recognition seeped into his face.

“You’re that recruit, right?” Poe started excitedly, the conversation now back into comfortable territory in his mind. “The one that cried — ”

He blanched. _Definitely_ not comfortable territory. What the _f_ _uck_ Dameron? The person’s expression mirrored his own, now impossibly wide eyed, but with the addition of a deep red flush across their cheeks. _Ok, time to backpedal. You’ve faced a star destroyer, you can hold a conversation._

“So. . .” he rubbed at the nape of his neck, further tousling his already unruly hair. “Whatcha doing here?”

No response. Just more wide eyed staring. Honestly, it was more than unnerving at this point.

“Oh me?” He tried not to twitch under their scrutinizing gaze, continuing the conversation as though they had spoken with what he hoped came off as cool suaveness to cover up his blunder. “I'm waiting for my soulmate. Kinda desperate, actually, do you know anyone it could be?”

(If he had been more focused on observing you than his social blunder, he would’ve noticed the wild way your eyes were flickering from his back to BB-8, who was rolling back and forth in an erratic way as if to say, _this is it, tell him!_ You kept your mouth firmly shut because you must stay true to your character of being a _pussy bitch._ )

Poe sighed softly. “Nice talking to you again.” He topped it off with an awkward finger gun motion and walked away with significantly less pep in his step.

He didn’t notice when you left the cafeteria for your shift, nor the way BB-8 kept on nudging him as you slowly disappeared into the surge of people coming into the mess hall for lunch break. 

Poe’s soulmate never showed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR SWEET WORDS!! It means the world to me when you comment even though the notifications always happen during my masturbation sessions and I have to stop to check what y'all said. Oh my god I just realized that sounds like I have a praise kink please no I'm not getting off to your compliments I've just been starved of positive reinforcement since middle school and have to drop everything to read them. I haven't written in SO long (especially anything with romance because I can't write romance) and the amount of support I've gotten from you guys has been extremely uplifting. I hope I don't disappoint! I personally don't find myself that funny (hence the Bad Jokes tag) and the relatability for this was up in the air considering I just basically wrote myself into the SW universe, but I'm glad you guys can find a bird of a feather with MC! I'm a bit stuck on the next chapter because I don't plan my stories but hopefully I'll still be updating regularly!


	4. The Principal's Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Organa is terrifying in like, a mom way.
> 
> OR
> 
> The author fixing a moderately sized plot hole with tacky glue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ain't gonna lie to you this chapter is shit. 
> 
> Warnings: Reminder that Carrie Fisher is not on this Earth anymore and the world has suffered greatly because of it, general second hand embarrassment and awkward dialogue

The silence in the room was the equivalent of someone trying to smother you to death with a pillow. In fact, you’d even  _ prefer  _ a murder attempt by pillow over whatever the fuck this meeting was. Even your  _ breathing  _ felt too loud for the permeating quiet. Every nerve in your body was screaming at you to bolt out of the room and hightail it off base, but General Organa’s mere presence might as well have locked you in carbonite with how stiff and motionless you were sitting. Your heart was beating so fast that you’re certain your blood pressure would have shocked the med droids into rebooting. 

Taking a shaky inhale, you readied yourself for what you were about to say. The problem with this approach was that you didn’t _have_ anything to say. Wait, wait — _formalities_! Formalities are always a safe bet. 

“General — ”

The older woman lifted her eyes away from her paperwork to stare at you intently and just like that the words in your mouth shriveled up and softened like a flacid penis. Your mouth dried instantly, and you firmly folded your hands into your lap to avoid the subconscious urge to gnaw on your nearly non-existent nails. (So much for formalities always being a safe bet.)

“Do you have any idea how many shifts you have missed in the past week?” The General asked, voice calm in that way that made you brace for the coming berating. Fuck, this was worse than being scolded by your mother.

You winced. “Yes, General, I — ”

She silenced you with a raised hand. General Organa took a few moments to neatly tap her paperwork so all the pages were in alignment before filing it away. You cataloged her movements uneasily, the scratchy echo of the paper rustling the only sound filling the room. Letting out a sigh, the General turned away from her files, resting her arms on her desk in a manner which caused you to subconsciously shrink into yourself.

“Of the seven shifts you have been assigned, you have only shown up for four of them. That makes three shifts where you have been absent from your assigned post.”

She was staring so intensely into your eyes that you were sure she _had_ to be seeing into the empty void where your brain was supposed to be. (What could you even say to that? _Oh sorry, General, I know we’re fighting in a war but BB-8 is a little bitch and leaked my schedule to my soulmate and now I’m playing a little game called avoid-the-pilot-and-his-devil-of-a-droid so that’s why I’ve been missing shifts._ )

“I understand your circumstances are. . .different, but you were assigned to the janitorial staff because that was the  _ only  _ division that would take you — ”

Ouch.

“ — and if you cannot pull your weight, I will  _ have  _ to send you to a different base,” the General stated with steely resolve, though her voice spoke up resigned disappointment instead of cruelty.

Send you to a different _ base _ ? No way in  _ hell  _ they’d take you if you’d been reassigned from D’Qar by  _ General Organa herself.  _ You might as well go back to Icy Shithole and live there for the rest of your miserable existence — you’d probably be doing Poe a favor by not having to go through the effort of rejecting you.

Your sabacc face must not have been nearly as stone-cut as you thought because the General’s face softened. 

She said your name softly. “I know that BB-8 has _somehow_ gotten the schedule of Commander Dameron’s soulmate and the pilot is now on a witch hunt for them,” she fixed you with a pointed stare and your cheeks grew warm as you tilted your gaze downwards before she could start shooting blaster fire out of her eyeballs. “ _and_ I know that these meeting times overlap with the shifts you have missed. I can only assume you’ve been avoiding Dameron.” 

_ She caught on pretty fucking quickly,  _ you thought as you nodded slowly. General heaved a sigh and lifted a hand to rub at the wrinkles in her forehead.

“I cannot tolerate this kind of behavior on my base, recruit. You cannot keep running away from Commander Dameron if it means not doing your work. Understood?” 

You nodded fervently. General Organa stared intently at you before seeming to find whatever she was looking for and nodding satisfactorily.

“You are dismissed.” 

Holding back a sigh of relief, you got up shakily from your seat after muttering a half hearted  _ thank you, General _ . There was the nearly silent pop as the lock of the door clicked off and the automatic doors fwooshed open in front of you, giving you a blast of cold air in the face. As you exited the threshold of the room, the older woman gave a call of your name. 

Whirling around with the grace of a Hutt, you turned to stare at General Organa. To your surprise, she looked almost. . .hesitant, as though she was toeing on an unspoken boundary — which didn’t make sense because she was  _ your _ superior. 

“Tell him,” she said with a simplicity that made you scoff so quickly you barely registered it. Her lips upturned slightly at the small noise, seeming to not care that you were just about trembling at the realization that you had showed insubordination to a superior officer, but the smile was soon wiped off as she stared at you with an urgentness that seemed out of place for the usually strong and composed general. 

“I know you think you don’t deserve him, but Poe has been waiting to meet his soulmate his whole life. He won’t reject you.” 

“How — ”

The _ fwoomp  _ of the automatic doors closing cut off the rest of your question. 

(Which was probably a good thing, considering that  _ how the fuck do you know that  _ isn’t considered an appropriate question to ask the most superior officer of the Resistance.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE THE NEXT CHAPTER IS BETTER (THOUGH I'M DRAGGING THIS SHIT OUT SO Y'ALL GOTTA HOLD YOUR BLURGGS BACK) I PROMISE IT WAS JUST BOTHERING ME THAT I NEVER ADDRESSED THIS (ALSO I LOVE MY SPACE MOM)


	5. The Merits of Ice-Fishing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ice-fishing has a real life application, okay?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: BB-8 pulls a Darcy Lewis on the reader several times, mood swings, self esteem issues, bad dialogue, pulling headcanons out of a hat
> 
> This was sitting in my Google document since this morning and I just HAD to share it because I just had so much fun writing this. For those of you that wanted a BB-8 and MC friendship, I hope this both appeases you and annoys the shit out of you. Do you guys know how hard it is writing droid dialogue? I just randomly decided that beep means yes in Binary but anything else is up to God to decipher. I SWEAR ON MY LOVE FOR THE PRINCESS BRIDE THERE WILL BE POE INTERACTIONS NEXT CHAPTER 
> 
> I listened to the slowed down version of I'm Not Angry Anymore by Paramore when writing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDH7B4GH2IU

When you were young, your parents disappeared for hours on end to venture out onto the icy surface of your home planet in search of fish. (It was a mildly poor parenting decision, leaving a five year old kid alone with open fire and flammable tauntaun fur blankets, but you turned out _fine._ ) The days were short and cold, and the nights were even colder and lasted so long that sometimes you worried that some asshole had ventured onto the planet and stole the daylight just to be a dick. It was a bitter — and quite literally — cold childhood, waiting in a burrowed den in the snow, unknowing if your parents would return in time before the few glints of light faded into the dark expanse of night. Unknowing if your parents would return at _all._ Unknowing if you would starve to death on the icy hellhole. 

You used to be afraid of the dark. . .and with good reason. There were no major cities on the frigid tundra you lived on — as all sentient species lived in hollowed out homes underneath the snow to avoid their shit being blown over by the winds — and at night you were left to wage against the subzero temperatures, bitter winds, and aggressive wampas with only the light of the stars to guide you. Whale oil lanterns could only be used inside, as when exposed to the howling winds of the tundra, they flickered out into tendrils of smoke which were swept away into the icy gust never to be seen again.

The ice planet was exactly that — an ice planet. Small snow covers land masses interconnected by a broad sheet of ice covering a permanently frozen ocean. Your mother had come from another snowy planet, Kijimi, but Kijimi was starkly different from your childhood home; full of glittery snowy hills and the turret-like mountains which rose to the sky. . .instead of a vast sea of ice and nothingness. 

On Kijimi, they raised beasts of burden to trek across the perilous mountain ranges, and lived in homes carved out of the mountain sides. Your father was from Coruscant, and had been raised in a densely populated metropolitan area where food was never short to come by, people were loud and flamboyant, and four cantinas existed on every block. After your parents met, they soon decided that the brimming war between the Rebellion and the Empire was too imminent of a danger. In search of sanctuary and in fear of their next home ending in a similar fate as Alderaan, the pair had fled to the Unknown Regions in search of a quiet place away from the war. (Which is why it came as a bigger shock when on your thirteenth birthday it was so blatantly clear that your soulmate had a clear alliance with the newly established Resistance. They never tried to stop you from going off-planet, simply saying that the Universe had chosen a path for you they could not resist. It was the kind of shit that was just the right amount of cryptic and supportive.)

Your Coruscanti father loved to recount how he and your mother learned how to ice fish by watching the native bears prey on the small blubbery whales that lived under the ice (somehow you doubted the validity of this story, but you’d let your old man live). When you were first taught, you quickly learned that ice fishing was a game of  _ waiting _ , in which patience was not just your friend but a  _ necessity _ . You’d stand guard around the carved out hole in the ice, peering with razor focus at the dark, frigid water gently lapping at the break in the ice — cheeks burning from the freezing wind biting on your face, hands frozen to the point where you couldn’t feel them, joints stiff and in desperate need of being soothed by your mother’s gentle touch — for hours on end. . .but you had to wait. You always hated the waiting, always pointedly aware that if you fucked up — if your attention broke for just a  _ second _ , if you missed the subtle tug on your fishing line — then no dinner for you,  _ bucko _ . You had never been good at catching prey: always too  _ hesitant _ , too  _ slow _ , too  _ clumsy  _ and  _ fidgety  _ and  _ distracted  _ to catch much of anything. You’d sink your line into the sea and it seemed like every fucking fish in the vicinity decided to take a summer vacation to Maldo Kreis or some shit. You’d always assumed that catching prey was one of those evolutionary traits where you either got it or you don’t, and had always ruled that you fell into the latter category.

Looking down at the writhing BB-8 caught in the net you had  _ borrowed  _ from a cargo ship, you questioned your previous judgement. 

You also questioned what the fuck you were supposed to do now. 

See, you might not have, uh, thought this through completely? This wasn’t exactly a carefully thought out master plan, and the step you were currently on you hadn’t even anticipated would, y’know,  _ actually  _ happen _.  _ There was probably some bullshit soulmate fate thing at play because this plan was about as thought out as the plan you had made for joining the Resistance. You hadn’t even set up a  _ bait  _ for the astromech. You had just lurked behind Commander Dameron’s X-wing — not even really hiding, like  _ real  _ amateur sneak attack type shit (wasn’t this droid supposed to be highly intelligent?) — until the droid rolled on by and you. . . jumped ‘em. 

For the improbability of it working, it was a rather simple course of action.

BB-8 took your temporary analysis of the sheer statistic improbability of the current scenario to fucking  _ tase _ you, because the droid — as you will reiterate time and  _ time _ again — is a fucking  _ cunt _ . 

“Fuck!” you cried, clutching your arm protectively and releasing your hold on the net gripped in your hand. The BB unit toppled to the ground with an ear-piercing clang, still tangled up in the net. “What the hell was that for, BB?” 

BB-8 stared at you in utter silence with an expression you could only imagine as  _ are you fucking kidding me right now? _

“You deserved being caught, slimy little bastard,” you defended yourself, crossing your arms over your chest defiantly as the astromech chimed indignantly at you while writhing around like an exegorth in a desperate attempt to escape the net. Pettily, you stomped a foot down over the net, and BB-8’s head snapped up at you in irritation before cursing at you relentlessly in Binary. 

You stuck your tongue out at the droid. “Oh come on! I’ve only been at the Resistance for a fucking  _ week  _ and  _ you’ve  _ made it a fucking  _ nightmare.  _ Don’t play innocent with me.” You kneeled down to the floor, the already filthy knees of your jumpsuit brushing against the rough surface of the hangar as you glared at the droid with a fiery distaste. “I got lectured by  _ the General  _ for missing shifts because of  _ you! _ ” you whined childishly, now staring eye level with the droid as you aggressively bopped it on the head. BB-8 shook off your hand like a wet Loth-cat, already whining and beeping with a frenzied fervor. And the droid was coming for  _ blood. _

You gasped indignantly. “I am  _ not  _ being immature! It’s  _ your fault! _ ”

_ Beep beep beep eep OO-WEEE beep chirp chirp whrrrrrr. _

“You  _ cannot  _ be placing the blame in my hand. We had a deal, you, you —  _ spherical bastard _ and — and you dragged it through  _ bantha shit  _ to the other side of the _ galaxy  _ and back!” You admonished the droid, gesturing at the astromech with large, angry gestures.

_ WEE-wooh whrr,  _ cried a seriously affronted sounding BB-8.

“What do you  _ mean  _ you didn’t break your promise?! You  _ told  _ me you weren’t going to tell Poe!”

(You pointedly ignored the fact that you had used your soulmate’s first name for the first time when talking to, well . . . anyone.)

BB-8 glanced up at you before cheekily informing you that  _ technically  _ you never told BB-8 that it couldn’t Poe about the  _ existence _ of his soulmate, only that it wasn’t allowed to tell him  _ who  _ said soulmate was.  _ And  _ that you had given your schedule away on your  _ own  _ volition.

You scoffed loudly. “You’ve got some nerve speaking, considering I have you  _ caught. In. A. Net. _ ” You held up the edges of the net to illustrate your point and grinned brazenly at the droid.

BB-8 stared at you blankly between the rungs of the net before taking out a  _ fucking flamethrower  _ from a compartment. You barely had time to remove your hand before the rope you were touching lit aflame and the net crumpled into ashes in mere seconds. You spluttered unattractively and gaped openly at the BB unit. 

“That’s not — that’s not fucking  _ fair,  _ shitface! You nearly burnt my fucking hand off!”

The droid informed you if that happened then it would perform adequate medical treatment to treat the burnt flesh and that modern prosthetics were extremely advanced.

You glared at the astromech before stubbornly jabbing a finger into the hard metal of its spherical front. 

“We have important matters to discuss. Mainly how  _ you  _ are interfering with  _ my  _ life  _ and  _ my  _ job!”  _ Each word was emphasized by a hard jab into the droid’s body. (A poor decision on your part, the droid was harder than a teenage boy seeing HoloNet porn for the first time.)

The droid beeped angrily back at you, and your face contorted into pure offense as you processed just  _ exactly  _ what the droid was saying.

“Okay  _ first of all,  _ only  _ I  _ can call myself a pu — pussy bitch and I don’t think that Dameron would appreciate you using that language.  _ Secondly,  _ this is not c — cowardice! This is — This is — ”

You paused suddenly. An awful realization sank down from your brain before pooling in your feet. The raging magma coursing through your veins had cooled into sharp shards of obsidian glass capable of slicing and dicing your heart and suddenly it was much harder to fuel the slew of insults you shot at the astromech. BB-8, who was silently gearing up to retaliate, stopped rocking back and forth in an aggravated manner and glided silently over to you. Absentmindedly, you reached out for the droid and began patting soothing motions on the smooth surface of its head. ( _ Good doggie,  _ a voice in your head snickered.)

“This is. . .self preservation,” you whispered to yourself, but the astromech’s audio sensors evidently picked up on your confession based on the chirp of confusion the droid let out. You sighed heavily, and stared into BB-8’s camera lens, which twitched side to side to get an accurate assessment of your emotional state. Groaning, you flopped over onto your back — not gracefully, as you let out a sharp yelp as your head hit the tarmac — and started at the D’Qaran sky. BB-8 curiously repositioned to where your head now lay, blocking out the mellow blue of the afternoon sky as it hovered above you and questioned what exactly you meant. 

_ Universe,  _ how do you go about describing that to a droid?

“It means I’m scared,” you admitted in a hushed tone, voice just barely loud enough to be heard over the native bird song and distant chatter of the other rebels. “If I run away then that means I don’t have to face the . . . rejection that will undoubtedly come with my confession. What if the Universe made a  _ mistake _ , BB-8? What if I — I’m not even his  _ soulmate _ and this is just some — some sort of sad one sided anomaly — huh? How will I ever feel like someone — ”

Your throat burned in that  _ just-about-to-cry  _ way and the dread building in your mouth had the consistency of too sticky syrup or that shit they give you to make teeth molds at the dentist.

“What do I do  _ then _ ?”

You raised your head despondently up at the droid, your eyes silently pleading for the astromech to say  _ something  _ —  _ anything.  _ But BB-8 wasn’t even looking at you, instead fiddling with opening its compartments as if searching for something. 

“BB. . .?” You questioned hesitantly, pushing yourself up with your palms so you were now vertically aligned with the droid. You tilted your head slightly and narrowed your eyes at the droid, eyes searching for whatever the  _ fuck  _ the astromech was frantically combing through its compartments for instead of, like, reassuring and encouraging you to tell Poe or straight up saying,  _ yes, you  _ **_are_ ** _ the fuck up you think you are and I absolutely agree with  _ **_everything_ ** _ you just said.  _

The droid’s response finally came in the form of literally shocking you. 

“ _ FUCK!  _ What the kriffing  _ hell,  _ BB? Gimme that!” 

You lunged towards the orange and white astromech but fell flat on your face as the BB unit swerved out of your way at the last second. You gritted your teeth as you hoisted yourself up from lying flat on your front and rose to your feet, wincing at the leftover string of the asphalt. Your sadness quickly evaporated, paving a way for the obsidian shards in your heart to melt and from back into hot, liquid  _ magma. _

You were going to punt BB-8 like a fucking soccer ball. 

The droid in question proceeded to go on a long rant about how Poe would be absolutely  _ ecstatic  _ to meet you, all while avoiding your advances and threateningly holding the offending weapon towards you. (Of course, it was that  _ goddamn taser  _ again. Had no one told BB-8 that electroshock therapy had been banned since the Clone Wars?)

“See, you could have just told me that instead of — instead of  _ electrocuting me?  _ Do you  _ enjoy  _ causing me unnecessary pain?” You bemoaned the droid, now towering over the little astromech with your hands poised at your hips. 

A single beep was the only answer you got in return.  _ That asshole. _

Your hands unclenched and clenched in quick succession as your mind clouded with an unreasonable amount of anger to feel towards a fucking  _ ball.  _

“You — You are the most  _ infur _ — _ infuriating  _ little  _ bastard  _ I have ever —  _ ever!  _ — had the  _ displeasure  _ of meeting,” you growled through gritted teeth as you kneeled down to face the droid, still painfully aware of the audibly crackling taser between you. BB-8 chirped in faux innocence at you and you snarled at the astromech. 

“I will tear your wiring out and eat it myself,” you threatened the droid in a low voice, before huffing. “Now go and mess with someone else’s love life, and  _ that’s  _ final.” 

You turned your back to the droid, striding out of the hangar angrily as the infuriating droid continued to call after you. You pretended not to hear the distinct soft whirring as the droid rolled beside you, and pointedly refused to look at the BB unit even as it continued to bump roughly against your ankles. 

“Shoo, bug,” you deadpanned, refusing to look even as BB-8 continued to roughly hump against your ankles like a dog in heat. At least unlike a dog, BB-8 wasn’t an ankle biter.

You retracted that statement immediately as BB-8 fucking tased you  _ again _ . 

“ _ Dank farrick!” _ You cursed loudly, hopping on one foot as your arm reached down to clutch at the offended appendage. “Oh for  _ fuck’s sake,  _ give me that!”

For once, the BB unit obediently obliged, and you swallowed down your surprise as you snatched the taser away from the possibly sadistic droid. Who the fuck programmed this thing?

“What. Do. You. Want?” you roughly asked the orange astromech, waving the taser you now had in your possession towards the droid in warning.

_ WEeeeeErrrrrrrrrr. Beep boop beEEP whrr beeeeeeeEEEEEEEP. Whrr weee-oooooh.  _

You narrowed your eyes in suspicion before your face softened into concern.

“What do you mean you’re worried about Poe?”

_ BEEEEEEEEP whrr wahOOOOOOH weee beep boop beeeep. _

You sighed. “Fine — Fine, I’ll tell him. But you have to realize that finding out I’m his soulmate won’t fix any of his problems, okay? I might  _ become  _ a new problem.”

_ Beep. _

“ _ But,  _ you have to stop with your matchmaking attempts while I’m working, okay? I don’t want to miss any more shifts because you walked Dameron’s fine ass here.”

A few moments passed before a soft  _ Beep  _ of confirmation came from the BB unit _.  _

Satisfied now, you instinctively kneeled down and outstretched a hand for BB-8 to shake. Flushing, you went to withdraw your hand when BB-8 started rapidly opening and closing compartments. Wary of a hidden taser, your shock and befuddlement only grew exponentially when BB-8 opened a compartment to reveal a. . . tiny plastic baby hand. A tiny plastic baby hand which was outstretched towards  _ you.  _

“BB, what the _fuck_?”

The droid made a humming noise that on a person would most likely translate into a shrug.

Eyeing the droid suspiciously as if the astromech would open a compartment and a wampa would jump out, you blurted, “What other things has Poe shoved inside you?”

The droid looked at you blankly as if saying,  _ seriously?  _ and your cheeks burned.

“Okay, admittedly that’s bad phrasing but what the  _ fuck?”  _

The droid beeped at you in an annoyed manner.

“Fine, fine, I’ll shake your creepy ass little man hand.”

A deal between droid and janitor was brokered once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever time one of y'all tells me that you think the reader is funny or like them this happens but with my ego https://media.tenor.com/images/29156ef1b2c13fd5018b344a4136e9e9/tenor.gif. I can literally not thank you guys enough for your sweet words and motivating comments. It's been really rough as an American living near D.C. these past weeks and it's so uplifting to know that people are relating and enjoying a projection of your frustrations.


	6. Author's Note

Dear reader,  
  
Hello. I'm sorry to disappoint but this is unfortunately not an update, no matter how much I wish it was. I fear there will not be an update for quite some time, as I do not think that this story can continue to live on in my mind. I fear that if I dare attempt to write more, I will wring this story dry of all that you and other readers loved and you will be left dissatisfied and I will be left feeling unfulfilled. Like an empty fucking pie crust.   
  
From what you can gather just by reading some of my work, I am quite obviously struggling with a wonderful plethora of mental illnesses. I would also like to mention that I am not quite as, er, mature as my writing may suggest, as I am only in high school. And I know I do not or should not have to justify my hiatus/possible abandonment of this fic, but I feel as if I owe it to you for your sweets words of encouragement that warmed me and briefly pumped up my ego like one pumps a tire with a hole in it.   
  
At the age of 8, I began to experience panic attacks and meltdowns which would render me completely unable to function for however long they lasted. Since age 10, I have suffered from suicidal ideation and self harm. I've had two therapists, one of whom I mentally refer to as "that bitch", and the quarantine in the U.S. was the only things keeping me from a psych ward after a suicide attempt and psychotic episode one year ago. I am medicated for depression, but every few months I can fully expect another depressive episode where I will feel nothing but the overwhelming, all-encompasing, cold embrace of numbness.  
  
Now is one of those months. It's been incredibly stressful as it's the end of the semester, and I'm experiencing severe burnout, writer's block, and a general low moral and self esteem. (I'm still unsure if the writer's block is making me depressed or the depression is giving me writer's block.) I desperately want this story to have the happy ending that I crave whenever I hear the words "soulmate au". . .but I cannot force humor into my work or write of joy and companionship when I myself feel so alone and worthless in this world. I have tried to write the next daunting chapter, but was left unsatisfied and displeased with my writing. The humor was stilted and my unzealous nature bled through the words with the subtedly of a period blood stain.   
  
For so long I have sacrificed myself for the sake of other people's happiness. I painted on a mask with a large paintbrush dipped in falsehood and weaved a narrative where mental illness was not a constant war of pull and tug but a rainstorm that gradually faded into the soft glow or the after-shower sunshine.  
  
In truth, this fanfiction started as a maldapative daydream which I tried to force onto paper. I never planned out what I wanted to happen and I've come to realize I do not know how I want it to end.   
  
You must understand a simple truth:   
  
I have never loved. I do not think I am mentally possible of even understanding what love is. It is one of those concepts so few described with words that you are left staring at an empty screen with nothing but the bitter taste of dry resignment on your tongue.   
  
But I adore the idea of being loved. Romantically, that is. I love the idea of being in love so much but I can only describe love in these words:  
  
It feels warm. A warmth that fills you so completely you fear you might burst into flames.  
  
But what do I know of love? I'm just a highschooler who got an AO3 account with a user referencing the one thing I love more than being loved:  
  
Boobs.   
  
Haha, real mature. I know. Thought I shouldn't end on such a dull note.   
  
I bid you goodbye, hopefully temporarily, and I remind you to take care of yourself as best as you can.  
  
Sending love,   
Jessica  
  
P.S. Hopefully when I gather my wits I can finally finish the next chapter. 


	7. BB-8 Has Height Deficiency and Anger Issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BB-8's still an asshole, but in a friend kind of way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHAHHAHSDJGHADLGJS HI GUYS HI HI HI 
> 
> Thanks to all of you for being so supportive and understanding during my hiatus. brandyllyn literally made me start sobbing with her extraordinarily well written paragraph of a comment and i'm contemplating literally just printing it out to look at whenever i feel sad (which is like....always). now i actually have a kriffing page count and the next two chapters need a bit more polishing before i can truly accept them as something that is actually acceptable for the human eye. (*cough* watch me not edit them and just say fuck it and post it tomorrow). 
> 
> oh fuck right uh
> 
> Chapter Warnings: bad network television, sexual humor and profanity (you know the drill), autism coded MC because i've been masking for far too long with no regard to myself, BB-8 typical violence

You and BB-8 had developed a tentative. . . _partnership._ You weren’t exactly _friends,_ per say, just allies of circumstance trying to achieve a common goal (which was technically what you _already_ were considering your roles in the Resistance). Regardless — not that you’d ever admit it to the metal fucker — the relationship was the closest thing you’d had to a real connection with another sentient being since being _literally_ tied to your mother in the womb. 

_However,_ this still didn’t detract from the astromech still being a _fucking asshole_. Admittedly, making a deal with a being that could run through millions of possibilities and estimate the probability of loopholes in the time it took you to sing the fourth verse of Fergalicious from memory was ranked high on your stupidest-fucking-things-I’ve-ever-done list _._ The list in question happened to be growing concerningly long these days, like an ever persistent hard-on or Pinocchio’s nose. (In case you were wondering, reciting the lyrics took a ~~worryingly~~ impressively short period of time. Your record was nine seconds and you were damn proud of it.) The droid had quickly discovered an infuriatingly obvious loophole simply because you never let any thought bounce around your head longer than five seconds tops. Your agreement was that BB-8 would stop all match-making attempts _during_ the work day, but that meant all match-making attempts _outside_ of your shifts were fair game.

In a period of two weeks, the astromech went from your hardened nemesis to a sort of . . .aggressively supportive sibling. It was essentially the same, but now the droid felt entitled to being in your personal space (yay) and your informal contract meant that you couldn’t tear the bastard’s wiring out because now you had no real  _ reason  _ to (hardy har har) as BB-8 was fulfilling its part of the deal.

Besides multiple failed efforts in getting you to confess to Poe — no, BB-8 I’m  _ not  _ going to march up to him during dinner for  _ fuck’s sake  _ in front of the  _ all of D’Qar _ and no, there would be  _ no fucking serenade I swear this is better be the last time you mention this so help me Universe  _ —  _ BB-8 what do you  _ mean  _ you got a  _ mariachi hat  _ what the fresh fuck  _ — the astromech ensured that every waking moment you spent with the damn ball was consumed with learning the ins and outs of Poe Dameron (which sounded like an innuendo, but for once it wasn’t. . .well. . .maybe a little). You got a history lesson on Yavin-4 and Kes and Shara Dameron, which answered more than a few questions you had about the best pilot in the Resistance's upbringing. BB-8 forced projections of transcript after transcript from the Commander’s successful flight academy education until the grades Poe got on Semester A of Year B were permanently seared onto your retinas. You learned all the places on D’Qar he frequented, his favorite mid-air flying move that made General Organa (understandably) flip the fuck out, and an organized fucking list of all times within a week he had laughed at a joke (including a complementary detailed description of the context and punchline of said joke). You stared glassy eyed as BB-8 chattered on about his fucking shoe size and daily calorie intake — yes, his motherfucking shoe size (no offence Shara). _Fucking Jawas in a jumpsuit_ , you had to stop BB-8 from telling you Poe’s  _ masturbation schedule.  _ (This incident opened up a Pandora’s box of questions, and you now made sure that whenever you went to give an old rub-a-dub-dub to the bean there wasn’t the slightest  _ hint  _ of the droid being in the room. If you ever talked to the Commander, you would definitely want to bring  _ that _ up even after the inevitable rejection. Fuckin’  _ hell,  _ talk about a surveillance age.)

BB-8 had even gone as far to steal a HoloPad just to draw a chart illustrating the positives that ‘fessing up to your soulmate could lead to on one of those days where you wouldn’t even dare to venture outside of your quarters in fear of seeing the infamous pilot. (Those were the days where you felt so overwhelmingly worthless that you just sat in your dorm with the lights turned off as phantom images circled like vultures in your mind — images of your soulmate’s easygoing smile becoming maimed with disgust. Disgust at  _ you. _ Those days where you wished more than anything you could peel off the layers of your skin like some fucking lizard creature and not have to be a  _ person _ because being someone entailed feeling things and feeling things was icky and dark and  _ too much _ for you tiny human peanut brain to comprehend.)

Begrudgingly, you would concede that BB-8’s never-ending perseverance was  _ almost  _ endearing. It would’ve won you over just a  _ teensy weensy bit more _ if the BB unit hadn’t  _ busted down your fucking door _ by manually rewiring the automatic locking system from the outside. You didn’t have a functioning door for  _ weeks  _ until maintenance _ finally  _ sorted through the multiple dormitory complaints and got around to fixing the problem. Reluctantly, you had elected to hand over your code to the astromech — it was one-two-three-fourth, couldn’t the droid have considered that laughably obvious passcode? — which caused many, many happy beeps and many,  _ many  _ unwanted visits.

The visits weren’t all that bad; like the time BB-8 had retrieved you lo-mein from the mess hall when they were serving it during your shift, or when the droid had calmed you down when D’Qar became too  _ loud  _ and too  _ much  _ and all you could do was cup your hands tightly over your ears and  _ squeeze  _ to shut everything  _ out-out-out _ —

Now however, you were desperately trying to shut the  _ droid _ out-out-out, which was becoming an increasingly challenging feat due to the repeated slamming of said astromech against the foot of your bed. This, of course, was followed by a nearly comedic chorus of screechy whines because the Universe decided that if you didn’t have a migraine before, you certainly would now. Groaning abysmally, you rolled onto your back with a soft  _ flump _ — the HoloNet blessedly shifting to align with your movement without your prompting — as you half-heartedly tried to tune your focus onto the embarrassingly cheesy romcom you were binging.

“You are the only one for me, Jiljoo,” the male human lead crooned, hands outstretched to his lover in a way that made you snort at the pure juxtaposition of the awkwardness just  _ oozing  _ from his stance sharply contrasting against the nauseatingly suave words escaping his mouth.

“How can I trust you?” The purple-skinned female Twi’lek retorted, sharply withdrawing from his advances and crossing her arms off her chest in a way that was pretty obviously meant to just  _ shove  _ her boobs in the viewers face. Good riddance, they even zoomed in. “You told that same thing to Koyi.”

(“Ooh,” you echoed mockingly and BB-8 temporarily stopped in its aggressive advances towards your bed to share the same sentiment.)

“But Koyi wasn’t my  _ soulmate.  _ You are. I am yours,  _ forever _ , if you’ll have me — “

_ Thunk.  _ You exhaled heavily through your nostrils and smothered a light scream of frustration into the sleeve of your leisure shirt. With an aggravated huff, you powered the HoloNet off with the remote on your bedside table, the two lovers’ now  _ very _ passionate embrace slowly dissolving into colored pixels which dissipated midair. Now the only sound in your room was the steady inhale and exhale of your breathing and the high pitched whines from your little orange  _ annoyance  _ as it continued ramming into the foot of your bed with the same futile persistence as fucking  _ Sisyphus _ . 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” you moaned (and not in the fun way), hoisting yourself off from your bunk and crouching down to pick up the BB unit just as it geared up for another go at your poor bed. The droid immediately began furiously rotating in your arms — which made the task of carrying a forty kilo metal ball just  _ that _ much more difficult, _ fucking asshole _ — but finally chilled the fuck out once it realized where you were taking it. With much exertion and whispered self reassures that you  _ probably  _ wouldn’t break your bed, you practically threw the astromech onto the mattress. There was a firm thud as BB-8 landed — the droid sinking deep into the mattress upon impact like a stone to the bottom of a pond — and you sighed in relief when the droid  _ finally  _ calmed down. Assuming the astromech was satisfied, you let out a sigh of relief and exertion and flicked on the HoloNet, lazily flopping back onto the lumpy mattress with a complete disregard for any grace. 

The soft hum of shitty network television filled the air.

“Jiljoo, I wish to marry you. . .if you’ll have me.”

“Oh, Roberto, as if I would ever turn down my soul — ”

You yelped loudly as BB-8 rolled over your soft, squishy, _vulnerable_ human body like you were a fucking ironing board. Your tits flattened like sad pulverized pancakes under the droid’s weight (if this was written by a guy your nipples would stiffen to erect peaks, sprout a mouth and say, _halt thyself!_ ) and you  _ swore  _ you heard one of your ribs pop out and then back into place.

“BB,” you wheezed out, arm uselessly slapping against the hard metal shell of the astromech. “G’d’off.”

The droid rolled off of you with the grace of a pregnant whale and you gasped loudly before shrieking at the abrupt shift in the weight displacement on the mattress. You pointed a finger aggressively at the droid and nearly snorted at the way the droid instantly beeped in alarm and — to no avail — tried to roll away from you but ended up tangled in your bed covers. Like a little swaddled baby. Or a  _ burrito. _ It was kind of cute —  _ hey! _ — no brain, now is  _ angry _ . Now is  _ mad _ . Now will yell at bad metal ball. 

“Now you is in _ trouble _ ,” you admonished the droid in a deeply serious tone, words not even processing until the last unfortunate syllable exited your mouth. 

There were a few beats of empty silence in which you and the astromech had an intense stare off. Just as the pause neared uncomfortable lengths, the BB unit let out a sound reminiscent of the crackling of a poorly made hologram projection which you knew to be the droid equivalent of a snicker. Face burning like the suns of Tatooine, you reached out and swatted at the droid. 

“Hey, hey! Quit laughing  _ scrap metal. _ ”

_ Beeeeeep BRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr bee-eep whrrrrrr.  _

You rolled your eyes. “I’m not playing _nice,_ you little prick, because you nearly fucking  _ killed me. _ ” You tried to insert as much aggression into the statement as possible, but you couldn’t help a small pout from overtaking your features.

The astromech made a trilling noise you recognized as a snort, and you bopped the droid on the top of its camera lens lightly, sending the droid’s visor snapping towards you.

“Seriously, though, dude, what the fuck? Were you trying to give me the galaxy’s worst tiddy massage?” You joked lightly, mildly scowling down at the droid. 

_ BeeeeeeEEEEPPP. Whrr whrrrr boop beep bop bop. Whzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. _

You snorted loudly and the droid whined back at you. 

“What, did you really expect me to believe that, BB?”

More high pitched whining, now at an increasingly loud volume. To put it politely, it sounded like porgs fucking.

“You need _my_ help? Go find an actual mechanic. Piss off now you little orange metal. . .” 

_ Think of an insult, quickly! _ Something to do with spherical things — like balls.

“. . .testicle.” You finished lamely. (No, not  _ those  _ balls you horny bantha!)

The astromech shrieked indignantly and then went on a long tangent that sounded more like a stream of consciousness than a formulated argument on why your help was an absolute “necessity”. The droid’s camera disk flicked towards you as if to say  _ see? _ and you fixed the orange BB unit with an unimpressed stare. 

_ Weeeeeeeee-oooooooooh,  _ the droid whined.

“Quit crying, you big metal baby — ” you slumped into the large nest of pillows piled at the head of your bed and buried your face into the soft plushness of your favorite pillow “ — _go bodher the peple thaht can acthually fixth thinths. Ih’ll probably just cauthe more damhage_.”

The droid made various clicking noises behind you that you didn’t recognize as Binary and you simply hummed in acknowledgment with closed eyes.

_Ah, finally:_ blessed silence _._ A soft, _warm_ bed and a non-stressful _Poe_ _free_ environment where nothing existed but the soft bosom of your pillows caressing your face like you were nuzzling a pair of big, warm tiddies. It was so nice. So _quiet._

_Suspiciously quiet._

You peeled open your eyes slowly, and a prickle of fear danced up your spine like the jig accompaniment of a Mon Calamari sea shanty. A too familiar crackle of electricity fizzled ominously behind you and you jolted like someone had just sucked your clit with a vacuum cleaner and whipped your head around so hard you felt your neck give a sharp  _ pop  _ in protest.

“Fucking hell, gimme that!” You cried, snatching the offending object away from the droid.

The droid meeped sadly, but  _ graciously  _ let you steal the object back. Holding the now powered off weapon closely to your chest, you gestured angrily at the droid with your free hand.

“What the fuck is this,  _ huh _ ?” 

_ Beeeeppppp whrrrrr weeeee-oooh. _

You scoffed loudly. “I  _ know  _ it’s a fucking taser, BB — oh for fuck’s sake you’re just being difficult on  _ purpos _ — look — first of all  _ don’t  _ — ” You raised a finger sternly at the droid like how one would admonish a small child. “ — don’t fucking  _ tase  _ people  _ you sadistic bastard. Second of all,  _ how in fuck’s name did you get a taser again?”

BB unit chittered happily in reply, seemingly to grow more enthusiastic as its visual scanners picked up on the signs of disbelief painted on your face with the subtlety of a large period stain on white sheets.

“What do you mean Poe gave you a _new one_ — ” you inhaled shakily and rubbed at your temples. Snapping your eyes back, you glared fiercely at the droid and tossed the offending new taser in question across the room. (With mild satisfaction, you observed the way the astromech beeped in alarm as its weapon of choice was flung across your living quarters and landing with a clatter somewhere nerby.) 

“BB,” you started through a heavy sigh, grasping the sides of the droid the way one would rest your hands on someone’s shoulders. “violence is not the answer.”

_ Whrrrrr weeeeeeeEEEEEE OOOOH.  _

“No — BB — BB, I know we’re in a  _ war:  _ fuck, how dumb do you think I am?”

The astromech’s head swiveled towards you as if to say  _ do you really want me to answer that?  _ and you let out an exasperated groan of frustration.

“That was fucking rhetorical, you  _ ass _ . Just — s — shut up. Shut up. I’m trying to lecture you, okay?”

_ BeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEp.  _

“What I’m  _ trying  _ to say,” you amended, shooting a glare at the BB unit who was making a show of adamantly listening to you. “is that if you  _ really _ need my help you don’t have to resort to  _ tasing me _ .”

BB-8 perked up at your subtle acceptance of its request and began beeping excitedly and bobbing up and down like a buoy. Chuckling, you reached over and gently placed the astromech on the ground by the foot of your bed — a juxtaposition against your previous choice words with the droid, but you couldn’t go breaking the admittedly best droid in the Resistance — and hopped off your bunk. 

“You wanted me to check out an X-Wing in the hangar right?” You asked, briefly stretching and grimacing at the sharp crack of your joints. 

_Beep._

Sighing, you nodded at the astromech and cocked your head towards the recently fixed door of your living quarters.

“C’mon, egg.”

With that final jab, you strode out the door with BB-8 in tow, mildly grumbling about how this wasn’t in your job description and you wouldn’t be any use with fixing a fucking fighter.

_ How dumb do you think I am?  _ you had asked BB-8. Silently snickering, the astromech trained its visor on your softly humming form as you blazed through the base towards the hangar.  _ Dumb enough,  _ the BB unit hummed internally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh oh HEY HEY PLEASE GO READ brandylynn's WORKS THE ART OF FALLING AND ALBANZA !!!!!
> 
> also i was just thinking last night and i realized that i have a severe previously undiagnosed case of daddy issues. i'll let y'all know if it's terminal, because if i keep reading these mandalorian and poe fics i might as well kiss the teeteringly stable relationship with my father goodbye


	8. X-Wings Look Like Dicks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BB-8 is being unnecessarily devious and you just want to appreciate the phalllic inspiration that went into most fighters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: I have the sense of humor as a 12 year old boy so obviously there's an egregious amount of sexual humor, bad writing

The hangar was reasonably empty for a Saturday, you observed. With a barely concealed whine of self pity, you dragged your boots sluggishly across the rough tarmac with a satisfying  _ scrape scrape scrape _ as you slowly trailed after the overeager orange astromech. 

_ Whrrrr WOOOOO!  _ the droid admonished from several paces ahead of you.

“I’m coming, alright? Being a biped is a daily struggle!” You hollered after the BB unit, begrudgingly picking up your pace until you reached the X-Wing that BB-8 wanted you to “fix”.

The X-Wing came into view and you stifled a small laugh, though BB-8’s enhanced audio sensors picked up on your muffled giggle and the droid beeped sharply at you in aggravation. (It wasn’t  _ your _ fault that you had the maturity of a Coruscanti teenage boy.)

Secretly, you always thought that X-Wings looked like giant cocks. 

Humungo rocket weiners. 

Space schlongs. 

Resistance  _ members.  _

Ignoring the wings that gave the fighter the tell-tale distinction as being an X-Wing, the X-Wing was basically a cock and balls. In its barest, most Jawa-stripped form, the fighter was simply two large bulbous engines on either side of a long, narrow cockpit. (Ha,  _ cock _ pit.) So yeah, it looked like a metal pair of balls and the hardest penis you’d ever seen if one was looking for such a thing. (And you were  _ always  _ looking for such a thing.)

(In all fairness, the Y-Wing had the worst case of phallic imagery. It just. . .it looked fucking dumb okay?)

But admittedly, _ this _ X-Wing was rather nice. It was obviously handled with a sort of reckless affection you gathered, from the small dents on the hull, chipped paint, and clearly improvised parts (supply chain from the New Republic was limited, alright?). The paint job — although rough in areas from firefights — was applied with care in a bold black and striking orange, which wasn’t something you’d normally peg as being an even  _ remotely _ okay color scheme, but somehow it worked. With mild fascination, your eyes carefully traced the sweeps of orange paint highlighting the sides of the cockpit and the angles of the fighter’s classical X shaped wings. It was. . .it was pretty badass. 

If you could have gone to flight academy — actually gotten a formal education that wasn’t off of HoloPads and Coruscanti common core anecdotes, actually been  _ worth  _ something to the Resistance and maybe even died for something instead of living for  _ nothing _ — you would’ve definitely picked this X-Wing (despite the fact it  _ still  _ looked like a giant cock — not that you had anything against some good girthy dick). 

But you didn’t arrive in the hangar to muse the what ifs or admire the swooping splashes of contrasting color across the slender body of the fighter, no, you had a job to do. What that job  _ was  _ you didn’t actually know, but you’d always been an in-the-moment kinda learner so you figured you’d be  _ fine.  _

What’s the worst that could happen? ( _ Famous last words. _ )

Clapping your hands together so loudly the sound echoed in the enclosed hood of the hangar, you swiveled on the balls of your feet (ha, balls, _ oh for fuck’s sake _ , keep it together) and faced the astromech. 

“Alright,  _ Chief,  _ what’s the problem?” 

Instead of answering, the droid rolled over and tilted towards the laser cannons. (Or a particularly torn up part of the tarmac — you weren’t sure.)

_ Laser cannons.  _ How the  _ fuck  _ were you supposed to fix a faulty laser cannon? Plastering on a weak smile because momma raised a sophomaniac not a quitter, you slinked towards the laser cannons with a puddle of dread pooling in your stomach like the shitty oat sludge they served in the mess hall. Stopping briefly, you knocked on the belly of the X-Wing hesitantly and whispered a small  _ sorry  _ into the metal hide of the spacecraft.

Now at the doorstep of the laser cannons, you gathered up what was left of your self confidence, slung a hand over the top wing, and crouched down so you were eye-level to the cannons attached to the lower rings. Poking at the surprisingly pliable material, you furrowed your brow and resisted the urge to chew on your dirt covered fingernails in contemplation. Maybe if you just poked it one more time,  _ ooh _ , try to sling shot it —

_ Boing.  _ You blinked, staring owlishly at the laser tip which had snapped back in place with a verberating echo. Was that supposed to have happened?

“Hey, Beebs!” you hollered worryingly at the droid, nibbling your bottom lip contemplatively as you surveyed the suspected damage. 

That was  _ too  _ boingy, right?

Laser cannons weren’t supposed to be flexible like that or else they’d like. . .snap off or something. And that’d be bad because you wouldn’t be able to shoot people. Which was  _ generally  _ a good thing, but not being able to shoot other spacecrafts in a firefight was essentially a one way ticket to, well, death _. Fuck,  _ you didn’t know. After laying waste to your simulation X-Wing, you hadn’t been allowed near any fighters besides the times you were mopping fuel around them. 

The astromech chittered behind you before rolling to a stop next to your fear stricken frame. (Oh  _ fuck,  _ what if you destroyed some pilot’s plane? You would be dead dead. Like you always existed as kind of half-dead but you would be  _ fully  _ deceased if the X-Wing’s owner found out you had fucked with their plane. You’d probably get one word in about how badass the paint job was before they blasted you on sight. One of the janitorial droids would have to clean your dusty remains up and BB-8 would probably roll in the shit just to spite you post-mortem.)

_ Whrrrrr weeeee-ooohhh bEEEEEEEEP boop boop.  _

You nodded in faux understanding. Obediently, you placed your left hand firmly on the harpoon looking part of the laser cannon to hold it steady, kept your grip firm, and tilted your head away as BB-8 administered droid magic onto the broken cannon. ( _ Stage fright,  _ the astromech had stated, and you weren’t about to question the bastard that thought tasing people was fun.)

The ruckus of noises faded but you respectfully kept your head turned away because you really weren’t sure how many tasers the astromech had on its person.

“BB-8, you done?” 

A high pitched squeal of affirmation answered from. . . _ across _ the hangar. 

That was. . .that was fucking weird. Slowly pivoting your head towards the sound, you narrowed your eyes as you spied the small droid hiding behind an A-Wing ( _ that one doesn’t look like a cock,  _ your brain helpfully supplied). Confusion growing, you hoisted a leg to stand up only to fall flat on your ass due to a sharp tug at your left wrist. Snapping your head around, you glanced at the offending appendage only to find. . . _ stun cuffs _ ?

Yeah, stun cuffs. One cuff firmly encasing your left wrist and the other wrapped around the slender limb of the laser canon. Dawning realization fell on you with the grace and forcefulness similar to being rammed by a mudhorn.

_ Kinky fucking **bastard**. _

“BB-8. Unlock me.  _ Now.” _

The orange and white astromech huddled closer to the landing gear of the A-Wing, y’know, like a fucking  _ coward. _ (And the droid had once called  _ you  _ a pussy bitch.)

“BB,” you warned, trying to inject authority into your voice. Which was hard considering the cuff placement meant you couldn’t entirely shift your body to face the droid, and you were in a sort of mid-squat sit from the lowness of the second wing, so you were basically nestled up to the side of the fighter with your ass partly in the air. Lovely.

The droid beeped defiantly at you and you heaved a sigh. 

“C’mon buddy, I thought we had this whole partnership working. Why are you double crossing me now, huh?” you shot back in exasperation as you rattled your cuffed hand.

_ WEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeee wOOOOOOH WHRRRR whrrrrwooooo. _

You gasped in almost comical offense. “I  _ am  _ holding up my part of the deal!”

_ Beeeep beep. _

“I was going to tell him — ” 

_ Whrrrrr woooo beeeeep  _ —

“ —  _ eventually!”  _ you defended, and from your narrow field of vision you could see the BB unit rotate its head side to side in disbelief and start to roll away. 

“ _H_ — _HEY! HEY!_ Come back!” you shouted pitifully, a near wail that rang out embarrassingly loud in the hangar. BB-8 turned and fixed its visor on you with what you imagined as an unimpressed stare.

You stopped.  _ Wow, didn’t think I’d get that far _ .

“Could you — could you just tell me whose fighter this is?”

BB-8 cocked its head before telling you a name that made a pit of dread fall into your stomach like soggy bread.

“ _ WHAT?” _

This time — despite your pleas — the droid refused to stop its hurried escape from the hangar. 

_ Oh, you were  **so** fucked. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I do think I am hilarious and yes, the final chapter will be longer so I'm sorry for this short filler but it's necessary.


	9. You Finally Grow a Pair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You and Poe meet for the third time.  
> (You really have no choice in the matter considering you're locked to his fucking X-Wing.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: profanity, sexual innuendos and sexual humor (you know the drill), fluff (is that a warning?), random tense switch because why the fuck not 
> 
> Author's Note: I'M SO FUCKING LONELY QUARANTINE HAS BEEN TOUGH AND IM JUST SO GODDAMN TOUCH STARVED

It’s both a curse and a blessing that the hangar is so empty. A blessing in that no one can revel in your predicament, and a curse in that you can’t pester and wheedle someone into letting you out of the durasteel cuffs. (Honestly, if the hangar was miraculously filled with good Samaritans ready to rescue an idiot from a droid’s matchmaking attempts, you wouldn’t work up the courage to ask them to help you anyway. You’d just sit there awkwardly smiling and desperately trying to give off the appearance of comfort —  _ oh yeah these cuffs? no, I _ **_totally_ ** _ did this on purpose _ — and curse yourself when they inevitably left and you were still cuffed to the laser cannon.)

It’s a fucking Saturday morning, and you’re handcuffed to a fucking X-Wing instead of rotting the few brain cells you have left watching bad HoloNet programs. It’s ridiculous, and at the same time, you can’t help but feel a sense of relief.

There’s no place to run, and for once it’s a resigned acceptance rather than a piercing terror dinging like shards of glass into your throat. But by the Universe _ ,  _ does it fucking  _ suck.  _

For one, BB-8 handcuffed you to the lower wing, meaning that you can’t fully stand up or stretch. So you’re stuck there, sitting crisscross-fucking-applesauce on the tarmac like you’re seven years old all over again waiting for your parents to return from their hunt on the icy terrain.

Secondly, there’s not much to  _ do.  _ It’s an annoying breed of boredom, where you’re all wound up yet you have no way to release it so you stand — or more accurately, sit — poised and ready to pounce waiting for. . . whatever. It’s a smaller feeling to horniness but instead of a tingle down in your pussy waiting to be released it’s this electrifying prey instinct moseying around with your five brain cells.

Blessedly, you eat late on Saturday mornings so you’re not hungry by the time the quadrants are supposed to run through their flight drills in the early afternoon. However, you haven’t truly processed the inevitable third meeting with  _ Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance.  _ until the overhead speakers blare out a large alert to the entire base.

“ _ Attention!  _ Black Squadron report to the hangar, I repeat,  _ Black Squadron  _ report.”

You sit frozen as the loud tinny echo of the announcement rings in your eyes, and the realization is akin to someone trickling cold water down your shirt before dumping the whole fucking bucket. It begins as whispers of doubt that wrap around your mind like some sort of anxiety cephalopod, before escalating entirely. A smoke screen of panic descends over your mind, and you sit there shaking slightly on the tarmac trying not to wring your wrists because you can’t physically  _ move  _ one of them.

So you do what anyone logically would try to do: you feebly attempt an escape. You try to lean back and pull the cuff not locked around your wrist off the laser cannon as if it’d just slip off like a faulty condom, but that — to your _astoundment_ — doesn’t work. That’s when you start to escalate your escape attempt and start putting some actual sweat, blood, and tears into it. In this case, this entails placing your feet against the metal hide of the black and orange X-Wing and just pushing against the damn thing with the minuscule amount of lower body strength you have.

Predictably, you flop onto your back. _Hard_. Cursing through the pain, you let out a mighty shriek and kick the X-Wing another time just for good measure. You reel in for another kick, leg raised at a weird angle considering your perpendicular position to the hull and —

“What are you doing to my ship?” A warm — albeit sharp — familiar voice cuts in, startling you out of your assault. 

You yelp loudly and your foot harshly collides with the side of the ship, sending a noisy  _ clang  _ which verberates through the hangar _.  _ Lying flat on your back yet again, you tilt your head backwards to peer at the man behind you who interrupted your  _ very _ healthy rage session.

Oh fuck.

Oh  _ fuck.  _

Oh fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. 

_ Poe Dameron _ looks down at you with a furrowed brow and a slight frown painted on his way-too-handsome-carved-by-the-Universe-itself-and-chiseled-to-perfection golden brown face. You shakily raise your non-hand cuffed arm to give a shy wave, attempting to smile in what you hope is a pacifying way. His mouth twitches minutely at the movement, and when you shift your view back to his eyes you find he’s already staring at you.

Again, you are absolutely _baffled_ at how pretty this man is. It’s like a personal attack towards your senses whenever you see this fucking man. He’s just _that_ unbelievably pretty. The prettiest man you had ever met three times without saying anything to and this pretty man is also very much talking to you as you gape at him like there’s not a thought bouncing around in the space where your brain is supposed to be (which there isn’t, but he doesn’t need to know that).

You’re supposed to say something now, right? Else this is just going to be really awkward and you’re still  _ cuffed  _ to _ his  _ X-Wing _.  _ But these are your first words to your  _ soulmate _ , so they have to be  _ good,  _ right? Like,  _ yes,  _ it’s predetermined so technically it’s  _ already  _ on his wrist but still it should be like. . .not shitty and generic. Something cool, y’know. . . suave. Like that fucking HoloNet televison guy from earlier.

Poe frowns down at you, oblivious to your internal turmoil. 

“Did you hear me? I said — ”

“You come here often?” You blurt out so quickly that the words collide like an unfortunate shuttle accident as they exit your foolishly open oral cavity. 

You try to smack your left hand over your mouth as if you can just Ctrl+Z the horrible phrase you uttered, but you forget the  _ semi-major _ fact that this hand is the one tied to the laser cannons so your hand just smacks against the fighter with a painful thud. Your face distorts into a painful cringe of self pity and Poe looks at you in shock-filled recognition. 

Then he looks at you again,  _ really  _ looks at you — like nearly unnervingly so, but this is also the man you watched from behind a lunch tray so it’s fair — and he fucking  _ smiles  _ and Universe — it’s, just — it’s that big grin of his you’ve so often served from afar and you almost forget to breathe.

Then you  _ actually  _ forget to breathe because soon enough beautiful laughter — because of  _ course  _ he has a great laugh because this man  _ cannot _ give anyone a break — spills out of his grinning face and pools over you like honey (or freshly ejaculated cum, but that ruins the mood doesn't it?).

And then you’re both laughing, because you would do anything to just make that gorgeous noise keeping escaping from his lips, and there’s this warmth in your chest and you wonder why you were afraid in the first place.

Poe scans your face over with a small sort of smile before a pensive expression takes hold of his face and your laughter immediately dies down.

“When were you planning on telling me?”

“Preferably?” you question, a grimace painted on your face. Your soulmate __ nods. “Never.”

Poe’s face immediately falls, and you want more than in that moment than to shoot a blaster bolt between your two eyes because you're a fucking _idiot._

“No no not like  _ that _ —” you blurt out, and Poe’s beautiful brown eyes flicker to your face curiously. “ — not because I don’t want  _ you,  _ because how the fuck could I  _ not _ want you — you’re — you’re fucking Poe Dameron, best pilot in the Resistance — did you know that’s my soulmark? Not the  _ you’re fucking Poe Dameron _ it’s more like —  _ Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance.”  _ An amused expression fills his face and you shakily lift your inked wrist to expose the words. (You’re too preoccupied to notice the soft way that he takes your wrist in his hand and etches over the delicate script with utmost fascination and gentleness.) __

“And you know the first time you ever said anything to me I literally started crying — that’s not the best first impression, right? I mean as far as first impressions go that’s  _ got  _ to be lower tier — and I just kind-of-sort-of wanted to postpone the inevitable rejection once you realized who I was — are you still going to reject me by the way? I’m not the best at reading social cues so you’re gonna have to spell it out for me — also before you reject me could you get BB-8 over here cause that  _ asshole  _ handcuffed me — ”

You’ve barely taken a breath before he’s stooping down — a warm, slightly rough hand reaching out to cup your cheek — and then before you know soft, slightly chapped lips meet yours and you barely even register that he’s  _ kissing you  _ because he might as well have replaced the air in your lungs and the thoughts in your brain because all you want to breath in is  _ him  _ and him _ alone  _ for the rest of your life.

He smells like engine fuel and this scent that’s so uniquely him you couldn’t even describe it if you tried but he tastes like the shitty mess hall coffee and sunshine and promises and warm mornings spent cuddling with each other under the hazes of sleep and and it’s like he fucking sucks out the fear in your mind with his lips like sucking venom from a snake bite and you just barely stifle a moan as he deepens the kiss.

You both pull away at around the same time — though he continues to nip softly at your lips — and as you rest your forehead against his your face splits open into a blinding grin.

(From underneath the hood of a Y-Wing, BB-8 gives you a pleased thumbs up with a raised lighter.)

“I had to shut you up somehow,” he murmurs, sounding almost bashful. 

You peck him lightly on the cheek, and with satisfaction you note that a smile twitches at the corner of his slowly swollen lips.

“If you keep that up I might never stop talking,” you joke and he murmurs a laugh against your collar bone which sends shivers up your spine. A few moments pass in serene bliss.

“Poe?” you whisper, his warm breath distractedly fanning against your neck.

He hums, still softly nuzzling into you like a man touch starved. 

“I’m still handcuffed to your X-Wing," you say softly, fearful of shattering the tender moment but also needing to address this. "and you just kissed the ever-loving fuck out of me without knowing my name.”

He laughs sheepishly, pulling away and you shudder at the sudden absence of his body warmth. “What’s your name?”

Quietly, you tell him your name, and he echoes it back like it’s the most precious secret in the world and your cheeks heat up impossibly more. He laughs at your dazed expression, and kisses you on your bright red cheeks just for good measure.

“As for the handcuffs. . .I rather like you in handcuffs.”

You splutter loudly and he howls in laughter at your now deeply flushed expression. Patting you on the cheek in a patronizing way, a devilish smirk appears on his face as you pout at him, assuming that he’s gotten the last word.

A lightbulb goes off in your head and you grin evilly at him, causing Poe’s eyes to narrow at you in suspicion. You lean close to him, Poe’s eyes dilating as your faces draw so near that your noses brush against each other. Your press a small kiss to the scruff on his chin as you whisper conspiratorially: 

“At least I don’t have a droid that keeps track of when I masturbate.”

A beat. 

“ _ WHAT?” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M DONE MOTHERFUCKERS. I'VE DONE DID IT. I'VE DONE IT. I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED THIS FUCKING STORY AND I DON'T EXACTLY HATE IT. TAKE THAT DEPRESSION FUCK YOUUUUUU.
> 
> seriously though, thank you all so much for your support for my writings, my bad jokes, and during my hiatus/mental health burnout vacation extravaganza. shoutout to astrobarnes and brandyllyn and all of you other wonderful people who made writing this so much easier and more fun! i might be writing something for the mandalorian because i FINALLY finished watching it all after i got disney+ and i have unresolved daddy issues and din djarin could park his big mack truck right in this little garage (jk jk i'm a minor that age difference is illegal where i live). 
> 
> here are some poe fics recs!
> 
> Albanza by brandyllyn  
> The Art of Falling by brandyllyn (I'm a big fan okay she might as well be my internet mom at this point)  
> All At Once, This is Enough by DearLazerBunny  
> Earning My Wings by warqueenfuriosa  
> Courage by OoopsFanfiction  
> Winter Storm Warning by thirsty_for_characters


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